Abstract:

The excessive test time or a large sample size is required to demonstrate the reliability of long-lifetime highly-reliable products through the conventional zero-failure testing. In order to reduce the test time, a method for accelerated degradation zero-failure reliability demonstration testing based on performance degradation data under binomial distribution is proposed. First, the degradation and its variance are estimated at the specified time of a test unit from accelerated degradation model and measured data. Then, the optimum test plans are derived by minimizing the total test cost, and satisfying the constraints on the consumer’s risk and available sample size. The decision rules for terminating the test of a unit are also presented. Finally, the proposed method is validated to be effective on reducing test time with a real example. A sensitivity analysis indicates that the pre-estimation of degradation during the specified time period has a great effect on the optimum test plans.