Solder degradation with temperature

I once read an article relating to how solder is the only engineering material expected to operate at temperatures (say 80 - 10deg C) so close to its melting point (approx 180 - or 230deg C for lead-free). This is at 80% of it melting point temperature relative to Absolute zero of -273deg C whereas Steel is typically operating at only 40%.

This was suggested to be the cause of failure (or at least contributing to it) of a number of solder joints in a high temperature, high vibration environment, aerospace electronics moduel I had the pleasure of fault finding.

Having moved on, I now have another problem to solve but I need to prove to other non-believers that this failure mechanism exists. Can anyone shed any light as to where I might get information. The original document was a GEC-Marconi research paper which I no longer have access to.