§16§This book is a monograph about Mechatronic Reliability, an emerging branch of modern technology. It addresses professionals, graduate students and even senior undergraduates engaged in the research of solid mechanics, material sciences, microelectronics, solid state physics and mechanical engineering. The framework of mechatronic reliability unfolds in four parts, according to the sequence of electric failures, mechanical-electrical coupling, domain switching and mass-flow instability. Various subjects treated in the book are positioned along the interface between mechanics and electronics. Typical failure modes for materials under electrical and/or mechanical loading are identified. Analyses devoted to those failure modes reveal their mechanisms, and establish new theories for the assessment of their reliability.
