Impact of the space environmental conditions on the reliability of a MEMS COTS based system

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have attractive properties for space applications (lightweight, ...), but before using them reliability aspects have to be considered. MEMS COTS are components developed for mass markets and are so in general intended for applications on earth. They have thus only been tested for this type of application and before using them in space, their reliability must be assured in the harsh space environment (radiation,...). The presented reliability approach combines technological analyses, environmental testing and modeling techniques. It has been applied to a specific case: the part of a launch vehicles measurement system has been modeled as a virtual prototype and different MEMS models (accelerometers, pressure sensors...) can be inserted into this model. By the mean of simulation the impact of environmental constraints can be evaluated for a specific mission. In our case we have inserted a COTS accelerometer model, the ADXL150. The influence of two environmental constraints, humidity and radiation, has been considered.