Accelerated Life

Testing
Dr. Monalisa Sarma
SCSQR

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What is Accelerated Life Testing?

• Traditional life data analysis involves analyzing times-to-failure data

obtained under normal operating conditions in order to quantify the life
characteristics of a product, system or component.

• Obtaining such life data may be very difficult or impossible.

• Reliability practitioners therefore have attempted to devise methods to

force these products to fail more quickly than they would under normal
use conditions.

• In other words, they have attempted to accelerate their failures.

• The phrase accelerated life testing has been used to describe all such
practices.
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Qualitative vs. Quantitative Accelerated Tests

Accelerated life testing can be divided into two categories:

Qualitative Quantitative
accelerated accelerated life
testing testing
• The objective is to
• The objective is predict the life of
in identifying the product at
failures and normal use
failure modes conditions

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Qualitative Accelerated Tests

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Qualitative Accelerated Testing

Qualitative tests are tests which yield failure

information (or failure modes) only.

They have been referred to by many names including:

Elephant tests

Torture tests

HALT

Shake & bake tests

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Qualitative Accelerated Testing

Qualitative tests are performed on small samples.

The specimens subjected to a single severe level of

stress, to multiple stresses, or to a time-varying stress

If the specimen survives, it passes the test.

Otherwise, appropriate actions will be taken to improve

the product's design in order to eliminate the cause(s)
of failure. 6
Qualitative Accelerated Testing

Qualitative tests are used primarily to reveal probable

failure modes.

If not designed properly, they may cause the product to

fail due to modes that would never have been
encountered in real life.

A good qualitative test is one that quickly reveals those

failure modes that will occur during the life of the
product under normal use conditions.

Qualitative tests provide valuable information as to the

types and levels of stresses one may wish to employ
during a subsequent quantitative test. 7
Example

A manufacture of ceramic cookware uses an Elephant

test to maintain production quality.
Each item is heated to a specified temperature and
plunged into ice water
The cycle of heating and thermal shock is repeated until
the item fails.
The number of cycles of failure are observed
• A compressor may be subjected to high pressure test
• High voltage test to reveal electrical failure mode
• Vibration test to reveal mechanical failure mode
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Example

 A reliability engineer wants to investigate electrical current leakage

between transistors in an electronic device.
 When current leakage reaches a certain threshold value, the electronic device
fails.

 To accelerate failures for testing, the devices were tested under much higher
than normal temperatures.
 Devices were inspected for failure every two days.

 A circuit board is subjected to high temperature for an extended duration

that exceed anticipated operating conditions.
 A submarine communication cable undergoes deep ocean pressure
simulation testing.
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Benefits and Drawbacks of Qualitative Tests

Drawback
Benefits
s

feedback
Provide valuable
titative
in designing quan
y cases
tests, and in man a
are a precursor to
quantitative test.
e
Do not quantify th
y by
Increase reliabilit ure reliability of the
l u se
revealing probab
le fail product at norma
modes. conditions.

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Quantitative Accelerated Tests

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Quantitative Accelerated Life Testing

Quantitative accelerated life testing (QALT) consists of tests

designed to quantify the life characteristics of the product,
component or system under normal use conditions, and thereby
provide reliability information.

Reliability information can include the probability of failure of the

product under use conditions, mean life under use conditions, and
projected returns and warranty costs.

It can also be used to assist in the performance of risk assessments,

design comparisons, etc.

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Quantitative Accelerated Life Testing

Quantitative accelerated life testing can take the form of usage

rate acceleration or overstress acceleration.

For products which do not operate continuously under normal

conditions, usage rate acceleration can be used

For products, that maintain a very high or even continuous usage,

over stress acceleration can be used

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Stresses & Stress Levels

Accelerated life test stresses and stress levels should be chosen so that
they accelerate the failure modes under consideration but do not
introduce failure modes that would never occur under use conditions.

Normally, these stress levels will fall outside the product specification
limits but inside the design limits.

This choice of stresses/stress levels and of the process of setting up the

experiment is extremely important.

The application of the stresses must be accomplished in some logical,

controlled and quantifiable fashion.

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 Quantitative ALT
To apply accelerated testing methods the following facts should be adhered to:
Units identical to those to be used at the use stress level should be tested at the
accelerated stress levels.

Only the stress of acceleration should be applied, all other stresses should be kept
constant.

The failure modes at accelerated stress should be the same as those observed under use
stress conditions.

Each sample tested at a specified stress level should be homogeneous.

The accelerated test results should not be extrapolated to stress levels beyond the range
of applicability of the model used.
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Introduction

In typical life data analysis, a life distribution (pdf) that describes the times-to-
failure of a product is determined.

This use level probability density function, or pdf, of the times-to-failure can be
easily determined using regular times-to-failure/suspension data and an
underlying distribution such as the Weibull, exponential or lognormal
distribution.

In accelerated life data analysis, however, we face the challenge of determining the
use level pdf from accelerated life test data

To accomplish this, we must develop a method that allows us to extrapolate from

data collected at accelerated conditions to arrive at an estimation of use level
characteristics.
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Mapping from high stress to use stress

• The objective in an accelerated life test is to obtain predictions and estimates

at the use stress level.

• To accomplish this objective, we must devise a method to traverse the path

from the overstress pdf to extrapolate a use level pdf.

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Mapping from high stress to use stress

• Let's assume that the pdf for the product at any stress level can be described by
a single point.

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Mapping from high stress to use stress
• Obviously, there are infinite ways to map a particular point from the high
stress level to the use stress level.

• We will assume that there is some model (or a function) that maps our point
from the high stress level to the use stress level.

• This model or function can be described mathematically and can be as simple

as the equation for a line.

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Mapping from high stress to use stress
• Even when a model is assumed (e.g., linear, exponential, etc.), the mapping
possibilities are still infinite since they depend on the parameters of the
chosen model or relationship.

• If we tested specimens of our product at two different stress levels, we could

begin to fit the model to the data.

• The more points we have, the better off we are in correctly mapping this
particular point or fitting the model to our data.

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Analysis Method

• The second step is to select (or create)

a model that describes a characteristic
point or a life characteristic of the
distribution from one stress level to
• The first step in performing another.
an accelerated life data • The life characteristic can be any life
analysis is to choose an measure such as the mean, median,
appropriate life R(x), F(x), etc.
distribution. • This life characteristic is expressed as a
function of stress.
• Depending on the assumed
Select a Life underlying life distribution, different
life characteristics are considered.
Distribution
Select a Life-Stress
Relationship
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 Analysis Method
• Once you have selected an underlying life
distribution and life-stress relationship model to
fit your accelerated test data, the next step is to
select a method by which to perform parameter
estimation.
• Estimating the parameters of a model include
the graphical method, the least squares method
and the maximum likelihood estimation method
Parameter
Estimation
A variety of reliability information
about the product can be derived
such as:
• Warranty time.
• The instantaneous failure rate,
which indicates the number of
failures occurring per unit time.
• The mean life which provides a
measure of the average time of
operation to failure.
• B(X) life, which is the time by
which X% of the units will fail.
Derive Reliability
Information
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Life-Stress Models

Arrhenius Relationship

Eyring Relationship

Inverse Power Law Relationship

Temperature Humidity Relationship

Temperature Non-Thermal Relationship

Time_Varying Stress Models

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Arrhenius Model

The Arrhenius model may be used when the accelerating variable in

the test is temperature.

It estimates the characteristic life at use temperature from failure data

obtained at high temperature.

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Arrhenius Model

The Arrhenius reaction rate equation is given by:

The activation energy is the energy that a molecule must have to participate in the
reaction.

The activation energy is a measure of the effect that temperature has on the reaction.
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Arrhenius Model

The Arrhenius life-stress model is formulated by assuming that life is proportional to the
inverse reaction rate of the process, thus the Arrhenius life-stress relationship is given by:

mean life,
characteristic life, median life, or B(x) life, etc.
Life Stress Plots

The Arrhenius relationship can be linearized and plotted on a Life vs. Stress plot, also
called the Arrhenius plot.

The relationship is linearized by taking the natural logarithm of both sides in the
Arrhenius equation

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Activation Energy and the Parameter B
Depending on the application (and where the stress is exclusively thermal), the
parameter B can be replaced by:

B is a measure of the effect that the stress (i.e. temperature) has on the life.

The larger the value of B, the higher the dependency of the life on the specific stress.

Parameter B may also take negative values. In that case, life is increasing with increasing
stress.
• An example of this would be plasma filled bulbs, where low temperature is a higher
stress on the bulbs than high temperature.
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Acceleration Factor

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Example 1

The following failure data, in hours, were obtained from accelerated life testing a
sample of ten units to failure :
2,750; 3,100; 3,400; 3,800; 4,100;
4,400; 4,700; 5,100; 5,700; 6,400.

The accelerated life test was conducted at 150°C. The expected use operating
temperature is 85°C.

Do the following:
1. Use the Arrhenius model and determine the minimum life at the use
temperature.
2. Use the Arrhenius model and determine the mean life at the use temperature.
3. Use the Arrhenius model and determine the maximum life at the use
temperature.

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Summary Discussion

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Conclusion

• The aim of HALT is to create a list of the likely or dominant failure

mechanisms and modes that can then be forwarded to the design
1 team.

• HALT is the process of improving the reliability of a product in a very

short period of time (usually hours or days) by gradually increasing
2 stresses until the product fails.

• HALT are good for finding design weaknesses.

3

• HALT are usually performed on entire systems but can be performed

on individual assemblies as well.
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Conclusion

• HALT do not work well when there is a wear-out mechanism involved.

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• HALT is performed to uncover latent defects in product design and

component selection
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• The process subjects a test product to progressively higher stress
levels, incorporating environmental stresses, electrical stresses and
load variation, along with combinations of each of these stresses, to
7 precipitate inherent defects.

• HALT stresses the product to failure in order to assess design

robustness and margin above its intended operation.
8
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Conclusion

• QALT is the process of determining the reliability of a product in a

relatively short period of time (usually weeks or months) by
9 accelerating the use environment.

• QALT are usually performed on individual assemblies rather than full

systems.
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• QALT are also frequently used when there is a wear­ out mechanism
involved.
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• HALT gives a list of dominant failure modes whereas QALT helps to

predict when one of these failure mechanism will cause failure.
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Any question?
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 Reference

The detail material related to this lecture can be found in

http://reliawiki.org/index.php/Introduction_to_Accelerated_Life_Testing

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