Track 2 Session 9
8:00 to 9:10 a.m. Friday June 16, 2006

Practical Accelerated Life Testing Techniques for Product Development

Current new product development procedures require a Reliability Test as mandatory to evaluate new products prior to their releases. There are no simple engineering equations that describe the failure of a Transport Refrigeration System, sub-systems or components. The proper determination of the reliability plan is crucial because an erroneous test plan can be costly and misleading. The main failure modes may be first established and the life test developed based upon the failure modes. The purpose of an accelerated life test is to demonstrate a minimum life in a simulated customer environment. The ALT results in the real world depend upon the applied stresses and should be well behaved when the test conditions are not excessive or unusual. Simple reliability models may be employed to extrapolate the ALT to other customer conditions.

Key Words: ALT, Electronics, Vibration, Warranty Reduction