Accelerated life testing

Accelerated life testing is the process of testing a product by subjecting it to conditions (stress, strain, temperatures, voltage, vibration rate, pressure etc.) in excess of its normal service parameters in an effort to uncover faults and potential modes of failure in a short amount of time.[1][2] By analyzing the product's response to such tests, engineers can make predictions about the service life and maintenance intervals of a product.[3][4]

In polymers, testing may be done at elevated temperatures to produce a result in a shorter amount of time than it could be produced at ambient temperatures. Many mechanical properties of polymers have an Arrhenius type relationship with respect to time and temperature (for example, creep, stress relaxation, and tensile properties). If one conducts short tests at elevated temperatures, that data can be used to extrapolate the behavior of the polymer at room temperature, avoiding the need to do lengthy, and hence expensive tests.

  1. ^ Nelson, W. (1980). "Accelerated Life Testing - Step-Stress Models and Data Analyses". IEEE Transactions on Reliability (2): 103. doi:10.1109/TR.1980.5220742. S2CID 35734439.
  2. ^ Spencer, F. W. (1991). "Statistical Methods in Accelerated Life Testing". Technometrics. 33 (3): 360–362. doi:10.1080/00401706.1991.10484846.
  3. ^ Donahoe, D.; Zhao, K.; Murray, S.; Ray, R. M. (2008). "Accelerated Life Testing". Encyclopedia of Quantitative Risk Analysis and Assessment. doi:10.1002/9780470061596.risk0452. ISBN 9780470035498. S2CID 86534403.
  4. ^ Elsayed, E. A. (2003). "Accelerated Life Testing". Handbook of Reliability Engineering. pp. 415–428. doi:10.1007/1-85233-841-5_22. ISBN 978-1-85233-453-6.