ABSTRACT
Reliability of avionic systems is crucial to management and control of aircraft and space systems. Failure of avionics can lead to a range of consequences from less critical, like disruption in schedule or aircraft operations to accident conditions. Electronic hardware is typically a combination of board, components, and interconnects, all with various failure mechanisms by which they can fail in the life cycle environment. A potential failure mode is the manner in which a failure can occur—that is, the ways in which the reviewed item fails to perform its intended design function or performs the function but fails to meet its objectives. Virtual reliability is a simulation-based methodology used to identify the dominant failure mechanisms associated with the part under life cycle conditions to determine the acceleration factor for a given set of accelerated test parameters, and to determine the time-to-failures corresponding to the identified failure mechanisms.
