Test Design and Acceleration for Product Lifetime Reliability Demonstration

Traditionally, reliability demonstration or validation testing was done as a fixed duration type test, or a reliability growth/development test. In those tests, unless given by a customer specification or a related standard, it was left to the best judgment of the test designer to determine what environments are to be applied, to what level and extent, and in what order, the latter in case where combined environments testing was not available.

This paper describes design of an accelerated reliability demonstration and improvement test based on the reliability goal, desired level of confidence, and expected environmental and operational stresses that a product is expected to experience and accumulate in the course of a pre-determined time period (its design life, warranty or other). As an example, the paper describes design of the accelerated reliability test for an automotive audio amplifier and one of its components