Bridging the Gap between Quantitative and Qualitative Accelerated Life Tests

Test planners have long sought the ability to incorporate the results of highly accelerated life testing (HALT) into an early estimate of system reliability. While case studies attest to the effectiveness of HALT in producing reliable products, the capability to translate the test's limited failure data into a meaningful measure of reliability improvement remains elusive. Further, a review of quality and reliability literature indicates that confusion exists over what defines a HALT and how HALT differs from quantitative accelerated life testing methods. Despite many authors making a clear distinction between qualitative and quantitative accelerated life tests, an explanation as to why this delineation exists cannot be found. In this paper, we consider an exemplary HALT composed of a single stressor to show that the HALT philosophy precludes the estimation of a system's hazard rate function parameters because of the test's fix implementation strategy. Four common accelerated failure data analysis methods are highlighted to show their limitations with respect to estimating reliability from HALT data. Finally, a modified accelerated reliability growth test is proposed as a way forward for future research in HALT scenarios to characterize the risk of attaining a reliability requirement and improve parameter estimation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.