ABSTRACT
The concept of accelerated testing is to compress time and accelerate the failure mechanisms in a reasonable test period so that product reliability can be assessed. The only way to accelerate time is to stress potential failure modes. Accelerated life tests are also used extensively to help make predictions. Accelerated verification tests in microelectronics are designed to stress four types of failure mechanisms/modes. They are thermomechanical mechanisms, nonmoisture-related thermochemical mechanisms, moisture-related thermochemical mechanisms, and mechanical mechanisms. To relate field usage to accelerated test conditions, the most widely used model in industry is the Coffin-Manson model. This is a simple model used for estimating the temperature cycle acceleration factor. Any test that in some way accelerates environmental use conditions is an accelerated test. Two of the most common types of accelerated tests used in industry are catastrophic and failure-free testing.
