Ceramic Capacitor Vibration

This faq will discuss some aspects of this singing capacitor phenomena.

Ceramic capacitor vibration. Among failure modes there are open circuit failures and short circuit failures. Applications where vibration resistance is critical are becoming more common and manufacturer panasonic is responding with vibration proof components in their capacitor ranges. By the equipment manufacturer if necessary. There is almost no noise generated by the capacitor itself.

This is sometimes described as a singing capacitor and is actually a piezoelectric effect. When a crack occurs on the element of an mlcc multilayer ceramic chip capacitor due to depaneling of the print circuit board screw fastening or shock from a vibration or a drop it may lead to a short circuit failure. Singing capacitors piezoelectric effect abstract in some applications design engineers are finding a vibration or low audible hum coming from certain ceramic capacitors. Vibration resistance is also greatly enhanced by the panasonic anti vibration features along with the reduced height volume and weight.

Under the following status the vibration and or shock may be applied to a capacitor. However when a capacitor is mounted on a board the vibration increases and when the cycle of the amplitude reaches the audible frequency range 20hz 20khz of humans it can be heard as a noise. For example the noise sounds like a hum hiss or a. Ceramic capacitors faq.