Component reliability assessment and assurance using a new step‐stress test

Abstract

Several features of accelerated reliability testing are surveyed in this paper. A new technique for the practical evaluation of reliability under thermally induced acceleration is introduced. This procedure is termed the reverse‐step‐stress test, and involves a decrease in applied stress after some pre‐specified failure criterion has been met within a fixed sample of components. An analysis is presented which confirms that the reverse‐step‐stress test can reveal failures having low activation energies that would not be detectable in conventional constant‐stress, high temperature testing.