Fatigue reliability of fuses

Fuses are protective devices that are utilized to ensure the safety of systems and to prevent damage due to various faults. Conventional methods to guarantee the quality of electric fuses are based on standards. These methods consider temporary overcurrent to design a fuse. Therefore, cyclic loads, which cause fatigue, are neglected in design procedures. Additionally, according to the extended utilization of these devices, they are manufactured and operated at various conditions, which cause uncertainties in material, load, and geometry. To predict a reliable fatigue life, considering these uncertainties in calculations is a must. Hence, this project will have several major parts. First, a material framework will be developed which includes electro-thermal, mechanical, and life-time divisions. To determine the material parameters, different experiments are going to be done. A metaheuristic optimization algorithm will use these experimental results and the material model to extract material properties. In the next step, the deterministic finite element simulation will be performed. The results of this simulation will be employed to predict the life-time of the fuse based on electro-mechanical operational parameters of the fuse. After validating the deterministic simulation, in the next move, the probability distribution of the material properties, load, and geometry will be obtained, and stochastic simulations will be executed to compute reliability.