Environmental Stress Testing for Robust Designs
There is a rather large family of test methods associated with Qualitative Accelerated Tests. They're also known as RETs (or Reliability Enhancement Tests).
Today, we’re focused on the models that are used to help us with the design. Awareness about these methods will help us with future test plans and project management. We talk about environmental stress testing and remind ourselves a little about HALT.
There are ways to make our designs more robust through qualitative accelerated tests. We make sure we've already clearly defined the operating and use environment of our product; if not, we’ll go back and do that. We can test components and systems at higher stresses to highlight where our designs are weak and then redesign them to be more robust.
The ultimate goal of a qualitative accelerated test is to identify failures in our product. We study the root causes of those failures to ensure that it’s the type of failure that is something that we’d see in the normal use of the product. And, then we work to eliminate those root causes.
If we’re in the early stages of product design, consider using qualitative accelerated tests to help you make a more robust design. Contact a reliability engineer to get help and get started.
If you'd like to explore some of today's topics more, then I recommend these other QDD podcasts.
Episode 6: HALT! Watch out for that weakest link.
Episode 36: When to use DOE (Design of Experiments)
Episode 37: Results-Driven Decisions, Faster: Accelerated Stress Testing as a Reliability Life Test