ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some important technique for interpreting results from accelerated testing. The examples include: accelerated life testing of microcircuits using the inverse power law and a constant failure distribution, accelerated life testing of microcircuits using the inverse power law and a weibull distribution, and failure distribution parameters at different stress levels. They also include accelerated life testing with the Arrhenius relationship over a range of stress levels, accelerated testing of transistors with lognormal distributions over a range of stress levels, and accelerated testing at different stress levels when more than one failure mechanism occurs. Interpreting accelerated reliability test data is one of the most difficult tasks of reliability work, because it requires knowledge of all the major reliability tasks: reliability theory, accelerated test design, failure acceleration modeling, and data interpretation. Accelerated reliability testing often is considered too expensive or time consuming, and is therefore rejected as an option.
