Introduction to Accelerated Life Testing

Introduction

Foreword

This reference has been designed to accompany ReliaSoft's Accelerated Life Test Analysis software packages, ALTA 7 Standard and ALTA 7 PRO. The treatment of the subject and most of the examples included in this reference assume that the reader has installed and can refer to the ALTA 7 software.

The purpose of this <index>Reference Purposereference is to provide the reader with a general overview of the subject of accelerated life testing data analysis as it applies to the use of the ALTA package. It includes the underlying theory and principles, relevant calculations and derivations, and numerous practical examples and case studies.

Modifications and Enhancements

This reference has been updated and enhanced since the last major printing to include a discussion of the principles and theory behind the new functionality available in ALTA 7 and ALTA 7 PRO. This includes changes to mathematical derivations of Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLE) solutions to include interval data. This reference also includes an additional life-stress model: generalized Eyring model. A presentation of the principles and theory that support a new supplementary analysis tool, Accelerated Life Test Plans, is also included. A more detailed discussion of the cumulative damage model, with different distributions and transformations in addition to added ability to analyze data with multiple time-varying stress types, has also been added to this reference. This sophisticated cumulative damage model has been highly anticipated in the reliability engineering field and its development is the result of extensive research efforts.

About this Reference

This reference is one in a series of reliability engineering reference works created by ReliaSoft. Some concepts and examples related to life data analysis that have been extensively covered in ReliaSoft's Life Data Analysis Reference have been omitted from this reference. ReliaSoft maintains on-line versions of these documents on its Weibull.com site, and the reader is encouraged to refer to the on-line documents for the most recent updates.