Progressive Stress Accelerated Life Tests Research Articles

Progressive stress accelerated life tests under finite mixture models

In this paper, progressive stress accelerated life tests are considered when the lifetime of a product under use condition follows a finite mixture of distributions. The experiment is performed when each of the components in the mixture follows a general class of distributions which includes, among others, the Weibull, compound Weibull, power function, Gompertz and compound Gompertz distributions. It is assumed that the scale parameter of each component satisfies the inverse power low, the progressive stress is directly proportional to time and the cumulative exposure model for the effect of changing stress holds. Based on type-I censoring, the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of the parameters under consideration are obtained. A special attention is paid to a mixture of two Rayleigh components. Simulation results are carried out to study the precision of the MLEs and to obtain confidence intervals for the parameters involved.

Optimal design of accelerated life tests under modified stress loading methods

Summary Most of the previous work on optimal design of accelerated life test (ALT) plans has assumed instantaneous changes in stress levels, which may not be possible or desirable in practice, because of the limited capability of test equipment, possible stress shocks or the presence of undesirable failure modes. We consider the case in which stress levels are changed at a finite rate, and develop two types of ALT plan under the assumptions of exponential lifetimes of test units and type I censoring. One type of plan is the modified step-stress ALT plan, and the other type is the modified constant-stress ALT plan. These two plans are compared in terms of the asymptotic variance of the maximum likelihood estimator of the log mean lifetime for the use condition (i.e. avar\\[ln (0)]). Computational results indicate that, for both types of plan, avar\\[ln (0)] is not sensitive to the stress-increasing rate R, if R is greater than or equal to 10, say, in the standardized scale. This implies that the proposed stress loading method can be used effectively with little loss in statistical efficiency. In terms of avar\\[ln (0)], the modified step-stress ALT generally performs better than the modified constant-stress ALT, unless R or the probability of failure until the censoring time under a certain stress-increasing rate is small. We also compare the progressive-stress ALT plan with the above two modified ALT plans in terms of avar\\[ln (0)], using the optimal stress-increasing rate R* determined for the progressivestress ALT plan. We find that the proposed ALTs perform better than the progressivestress ALT for the parameter values considered.

A new way to estimate the parameters in the progressive stress accelerated life testing

Among the three types of accelerated life testing, that is, the constant stress accelerated life testing, the step stress accelerated life testing, and the progressive stress accelerated life testing, the last one is the most effective and economical way to get the failure times of products in a short period of time. In this article a deficiency in the classical approach is pointed out and a new method for the statistical analysis of life data, especially for electronic products, under progressive stress (voltage)V(t) =Kt is given. Using the Bayesian method, for certain choices of the prior distribution, several forms of estimators of the parameters in the normal stress Weibull distribution and the inverse power law model are derived. In particular, when the new shape parameter of the distribution under progressive stress is given (or estimated in advance), the closed forms of these estimators are relatively simple and are numerically accessible on computers. The formulations are given for the general case and are illustrated for a special simple case. Comparison with the classical approach using pseudorandom data as well as real data on solid tantatum electrolytic capacitors shows that the proposed method is better and more effective.

A nonparametric approach to progressive stress accelerated life testing : Zhengning Lin and Heliang Fei. IEEE Trans. Reliab.40(2), 173 (1991)

A nonparametric approach to progressive stress accelerated life testing : Zhengning Lin and Heliang Fei. IEEE Trans. Reliab.40(2), 173 (1991)

A nonparametric approach to progressive stress accelerated life testing

Progressive-stress accelerated life testing in which the stress on an unfailed item increases linearly with test time when the time transformation function is a version of the inverse power law is considered. The approach is nonparametric in that not many assumptions are made about life distribution. A testing pattern is introduced, and it is explained how to draw inferences from progressive stress tests. An estimator of life distribution at the usual stress level is proposed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

An accelerated life test model with the inverse power law

Abstract Constant and progressive stress accelerated life test models based on the inverse power law and Weibull lifetime distributions are proposed in which the Weibull scale parameter at use condition has a gamma prior distribution and other parameters are unknown constants. Bayes and maximum likelihood methods are used to estimate the model parameters. Monte Carlo study is performed to investigate the behaviour of the estimators.