Overview of Accelerated Life Testing Principles and Practices

This course provides an integrated overview of important issues and considerations associated with accelerated life testing, including purpose and goals of accelerated testing; critical assumptions and information needs; appropriate levels of assembly for testing; short-term test strategies, such as step-stress testing and stress screening; long-term test strategies, such as durability and fatigue tests; physics of accelerated testing; strengths and weaknesses of common test-time compression models; accelerated test limitations and cautions; and accelerated testing in government test standards.

Course outline     Who should attend?     Course materials     Instructor

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Course outline

• Accelerated testing as systems engineering
• Importance of good test assumptions
• What is and isn’t accelerated
• Environmental loads and effects
  • Vibration
  • Temperature
  • Humidity
  • Power cycling
• Accelerated test approaches
  • Increased frequency of load application
  • Exaggerated test loads
• Short-term vs. long-term accelerated tests
• Examples of test time compression models
• Potential traps and pitfalls

Who should attend?

I need to gain an understanding of accelerated life testing principles because:

• I am responsible for planning, executing, or reviewing accelerated/exaggerated environmental test and evaluation activities
• I am a newcomer or casual practitioner of environmental reliability testing
• I am an engineer or manager

Course materials

• Copy of PowerPoint presentation in course binder
• Certificate of attendance for completion of CEUs

Continuing Education Units: .3 CEUs

Instructor

Henry (Hank) Caruso