Product Validation Test Research Articles

Optimal number of tests to achieve and validate product reliability

The reliability validation of engineering products and systems is mandatory for choosing the best cost-effective design among a series of alternatives. Decisions at early design stages have a large effect on the overall life cycle performance and cost of products. In this paper, an optimization-based formulation is proposed by coupling the costs of product design and validation testing, in order to ensure the product reliability with the minimum number of tests. This formulation addresses the question about the number of tests to be specified through reliability demonstration necessary to validate the product under appropriate confidence level. The proposed formulation takes into account the product cost, the failure cost and the testing cost. The optimization problem can be considered as a decision making system according to the hierarchy of structural reliability measures. The numerical examples show the interest of coupling design and testing parameters.

A methodology for the performance analysis of product validation and test plans

Companies in a variety of industries that develop complex products have well-defined processes for developing product validation plans (to determine the number and types of prototypes needed for new product development) and test plans (to determine how tests are scheduled on each prototype). Uncertainty is prevalent in product validation and testing, with test execution times and prototype availability being among the most variable. The methodology developed in this research explicitly considers uncertainty and develops models and algorithms for the performance analysis of product validation and test plans. It also evaluates the tradeoffs between the various performance criteria of the validation plan, e.g., on-time performance, cost (number of test prototypes used) and quality (number and types of requirements validated). The application of the approach is presented with an industrial example of the performance analysis of vehicle validation and test schedules.