Testing of an avionics power supply and safety integration for the operator

Printed Circuit Boards Assembly (PCBAs) are regularly used in several electronics and technologies which make them very valuable devices. Defects or manufacturing faults within the printed circuit board production can cause failures in the final product with potentially catastrophic consequences in safety-critical fields. The testing phase of PCBAs is one of the most important stages because it determines the high quality of the final product. My thesis work, completely carried out in SPEA, a global leader company in testing, aimed to develop the testing of an avionics power supply board and the relative safety integration for the operator. Firstly, I had the possibility to closely see the state-of-the-art of SPEA tester, in particular the Flying Probe and 3030 Bed of Nails. After becoming familiar with SPEA systems, I was able to interface with the customer documentation in order to evaluate if the required tests could be performed by a SPEA tester, and if so, choose the correct one. In the end, the assurance of the feasibility of the entire project is evaluate. Thanks to the Leonardo software tool, developed by SPEA, the next step was to generate the test program (TPGM), starting from the following files: the circuit diagram, the CAD and the BOM. After that, there is the implementation of the design of the adapter (fixture), which is a mechanical object that connect the board with the system instruments. In this phase after the analyzing of the documentation, the designer is able to understand which tools and external hardware are needed. Furthermore, it is also necessary to prepare the fixture test program, which is a series of tests to check if there are any floats or shorts on the fixture. The debug step can be divided in: In-Circuit test (ICT) and Functional Test (FCT). ICT tests are referred to passive and discrete components and FCT tests are useful for testing the complete functioning of the board. In this application, I performed only the FCT tests because the ICT is executed by the customer company. To perform these specific tests, it is needed the writing of a test program in Visual Studio, using vb.net language, in order to execute some commands related to the system instrumentations. Finally, I was able to carry out an in-depth analysis on the safety devices present in the system to guarantee the safety of the operator.