Stress analysis is of crucial importance in the design of components and systems in the electronic industry. This paper presents a dynamic finite element approach dynamic finite element approach for following the evolution of residual thermal stress during pulsed exposure of multilevel structures. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the application of this approach. Its concern the transient thermal stress modeling of multilevel semiconductor devices undergoing short pulses heating, We describe the elastic deformation of device due to thermal pulsed loading. The main advantage of proposed approach is that it allows one to account for thermomechanical properties and conditions changes during repetitive exposure heating, as well as the historical stresses and distortions introduced at each pulse. A three-dimensional finite element model was constructed to simulate multilevel devices under short pulsed loading. The temperature distributions obtained were used as input in order to compute thermal stress and mechanical deformations of the multilevel structures. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.