HALT to FMVT The Migration of Highly Accelerated Life Testing from Solid State Electronics to Mechanical Systems

HALT to FMVT details Entela, Inc.'s initial contact with Highly Accelerated Life Testing and this companies efforts to apply the technique to mechanical systems. Technical problems encountered are explored and some solutions noted. The technical and market forces moving the automotive industry toward Highly Accelerated Life Testing and Failure Mode Verification Testing are out-lined. Several successful examples of FMVT are given with comparison to the traditional testing technique. Some results of a Finite Element Analysis of how HALT and FMVT works are also presented.

Highly Accelerated Life Testing has been used in the electronics and aerospace industry for many years. Applying the techniques of HALT to mechanical systems in the automotive industry required investigating how and why the technique worked and providing for the differences in products under test. Significant differences in resonance characteristics and in operational perimeters where identified and several solutions tried.

Several case studies have demonstrated that the FMVT method is successful at identifying design inherent failure modes quickly. The method has been correlated to test track results and has been used to avoid serious warranty problems.