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Many, but not all, of the failure mechanisms on this list are related to temperature. Conversely, for every 10☌ your power supply’s ambient temperature increases, your MTBF cuts in half (that is, your power supply is half as reliable).
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Power supplies or products such as ATX power supplies or a product meant for ultra-low-cost applications were not analyzed because it’s difficult to get data on returns intended to be disposable.Ī fundamental law of physics is that for every 10☌ that you are able to keep the power supply’s environment lower than 40☌, you double the mean time between failures (MTBF). It includes the most common power electronics applications, from low-cost to extremely high-cost, including flight simulators, digital signage, medical equipment test and measurement equipment, and semiconductor equipment. The data analyzed from these sources spans across all markets and applications, including industrial, medical electronics, military, telecom, datacom, and computing and scientific fields. The group has over 6,000 members who weigh in on the topic. Ray Ridley of Ridley Engineering based on input from his LinkedIn “Power Supplies” group. In order to cover all power industry segments, this article also relies on analysis of a study done by Dr. This includes data from more than 1,700 units sent to them in 2015 alone, giving you an idea of how many non-working power supplies are seen on a routine basis. Since 1987, Power Clinic has collected data on power supply failures covering over 12,000 different models sent in from over 1,600 different companies. The power supply data analyzed for this article is based, in part, on studies conducted by Excelsys in many applications all over the world and also on the North American power supply refurbishment/repair company, Power Clinic. It will also offer the necessary precautions that you, as design engineers, should take to avoid systems failures. In this article, I use industry research and my own long-time experience to present the five reasons that power supplies fail. Power supplies are the underpinning of any electronic system.