Optimal design of accelerated degradation tests

With increasing emphasis on reliability in industry, products are made more robust, and few failures can be observed in a reasonable test period. Therefore, assessing product reliability using accelerated degradation tests (ADTs) can become very useful. There is a need to scientifically design these test plans to provide a more accurate estimate of reliability for the same amount of test resources. This paper presents a four-step approach to determine the number of units to test, test stress levels, number of units to allocate to the test stress levels, test termination time, and time at which to measure the test units for an ADT given a cost budget such that the mean squared error (MSE) of the estimated mean life of a product is minimum. This enables reliability and test engineers to get the most efficient use of their test resources to determine the reliability of their products in a shorter time at a minimum cost.