Abstract

Sensata Technologies is a world leading supplier of sensors and controls across a broad range of markets and applications. These highly engineered devices satisfy the world?s growing need for safety, energy efficiency, and a clean environment. Sensata designs and manufactures a broad range of automotive sensors, high voltage switches and fuses for the EV market that leaders in the industry depend on for safety, comfort and affordability. Supporting the sensor design teams in Sensata is the Simulation Centre of Excellence (SCoE) which has been established to bring together simulation skills from across the company. It also supports the understanding of previously unknown failure modes in our products by simulation. These types of analysis are typically nonlinear (failure) and/or multi physics due to the nature of our products (sensors and actuators), which bridge the gap between the realms of physics. Field returns in the automotive market can quickly turn into a high escalation, since it involves large numbers and can pose a high (economical) risk. Sensata is using several tools to find the root cause in the most optimal way. This toolbox is called ?diagnostic problem solving? and consists of statistical tools, failure tree and simulation. The toolbox was developed in conjunction with external tools experts and is highly praised by our automotive customers. Simulation is a key part of this toolbox and is used to: a) give insights in how realistic a root cause mechanism might be b) optimize testing by calculating responses upfront c) recreate experiments and vary ?hard to control? parameters d) enable the creation of a Pareto of individual confound contributors Over the years several cases have successfully been solved in a timely matter, showing the power of combining traditional, statistical and simulation tools. Examples of these cases are: Modelling of crack propagation in epoxies under thermal cycling, prediction of ceramic diaphragm deterioration in the first grain layer after exposure to exhaust gasses, parasitic capacity calculation of sensor shift due to buckling of flexible circuit board, leakage in turbo charge temperature sensor interface after high temperature exposure.