Automakers like Ford, GM, Volvo and Tesla made major strides in 2016 for autonomous vehicle technology, and are closer to making driverless cars a reality for the average consumer. Meanwhile, Uber made news when they introduced self-driving fleets to the public. While driverless cars may not be pulling into most driveways in the immediate future, it’s clear the race is on.
Converting AC voltage to higher or lower amounts in semiconductors and other applications requires that power supplies use transformers. The solution is a simple one, yet there are four common issues power supply transformers face that can inhibit reliability.
Electrical/Electronic products have complicated and lengthy durability-reliability demonstrations testing. The environmental conditions and simulation and acceleration standards usually results in intensive physical test to field correlation projects that last 2-3 years.
Designing new products right on the first attempt is a key objective for accelerating and optimizing automotive electronics and other product development. Upfront knowledge of how and why failures can occur makes it possible for products to be created with less susceptibility to failure risks. This approach, known as Design for Reliability (DfR), is based on understanding failure mechanisms by applying the Physics of Failure (PoF).
In 1965, Intel® co-founder Gordon Moore noted that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits (IC) doubled every year since their invention.
Electronics integration is prevalent in many markets, perhaps none more so than the automotive industry. As a result, physics-based computer aided engineering (CAE) tools have taken vehicle, subsystem and component evaluations off the road and into the lab, allowing for increased design complexities – and necessitating major reliability testing process changes.
The technologies currently available to or being developed for the automotive industry are staggering. With these advancements comes the need to examine the types of processing units appropriate to power the autonomous vehicle electronics functionality.
The automotive industry is rapidly changing. A number of technologies are either currently available or in development that are aimed specifically at improving vehicular safety. Along with these welcome – and needed – advancements comes much stronger regulatory oversight incorporated into ISO-26262.
The automotive industry is one of increasing technological advancements. The vehicular electronic content on a typical internal combustion engine currently hovers between 70 and 80 modules. Factor in the complexities of hybrid and electric vehicles and the number rises exponentially. These complexities add to OEMs’ comprehensive safety testing that encompasses item definition, safety life cycle initiation, hazard analysis and risk assessment, and functional safety concept.
Concurrent engineering, also known as simultaneous engineering, is a method of designing and developing products in which the different stages of functional development are run at the same time rather than in consecutive order. This approach decreases product development time and also the time to market, leading to improved productivity and reduced costs.
