Acceleration-factor (AF) equations have been developed to rapidly predict product lifetime, and the most widely used equation is Norris-Landzberg (N-L) equation. In recent years, some researchers have found that the current AF equation does not accurately predict the experimental results for thermal cyclic loading at high ramp rates; indeed, it may yield the opposite results, due to the changing effect of the solder strain rate at different ramp rates. Modifying the current AF equation to better assess product reliability has thus become an important task for researchers.

In this study, a novel AF equation was developed from a wafer level chip-scale package (WLCSP) under different thermal cyclic loadings. The frequency term used in the N-L equation was replaced with a new term in the proposed AF equation to distinguish between the effects of ramp rate and dwell time under thermal cyclic loading conditions. Proposed AF equation showed a high level of correlation with the simulation and test results for various thermal cyclic loadings. In addition, the proposed AF equation was validated by confirming the consistency of its results with experimental data on a range of packages and thermal-cycling profiles reported in the literature.