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Accelerated Reliability Testing 3-Day Course

Course Description

Introduces accelerated testing approaches that can be effectively used to characterize and improve product reliability. Shows the students how to develop and optimize test plans for accelerated testing and presents graphical and analytical analysis methods. Discusses models for life testing at constant stress, and for step and time varying stresses. Includes hands-on exercises using software tools.

Who Should Take the Course

Designers, reliability specialists, and program managers can benefit from a knowledge of how accelerated testing techniques can be used to improve and characterize product reliability.

What the Student Will Learn

The student will leave the course with an understanding of the basics of failure mechanisms and life modeling with an ability to define effective accelerated test plans, as well as to analyze and interpret the test results.

Mohammed Modarres, PhD

Picture of Modarres

Professor Modarres is the Director of the University of Maryland's Center for Reliability Engineering the world leader in reliability education. He has authored numerous books in the fields of reliability and risk management, most recently "Risk Analysis in Engineering: Probabilistic Techniques, Tools and Trends." Dr. Modarres has an MS in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and his current research interests are Probabilistic Risk Assessment, Complex Systems Functional Modeling, and Deterministic-Probabilistic Modeling of Engineering Systems. Dr. Modarres is a former University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and a Maryland Inventors' Award Winner. He has supported dozens of government and industry organizations in the fields of reliability and risk assessment.

Course Outline

  1. Engineering Approach to Reliability vs. Statistical Approach to Reliability

  2. Theories and Models of Basic Materials Failure

    • Strength and Deformation of Materials: Elastic Deformation, Plastic Deformation, Fracture, Stress-Strength, Damage-Endurance and Performance-Requirement Reliability Theories, and Agents of Failure

  3. Leading Mechanisms of Failure

    • Mechanical Failure Mechanisms: Fatigue, Corrosion, Wear, and Combinations of Mechanisms

    • Electrical Failure Mechanisms: Diffusion, Corrosion, Electromigration, Thermally-Induced Fatigue, and Fatigue Induced by Vibration

  4. Engineering-Based Accelerated Life Modeling and Testing

    • Parametric Reliability and Life Models: Single-variable Models and Multi-variable Models

    • Data Gathering: Testing, Field, and Expert Judgment
    • Accelerated Testing to Generate Reliability Data: Types of Tests (ALTS, HALT, Step Stress, Degradation, Varying Stress, ESS), Planning Accelerated Life Tests (to generate complete data or censored data), Performing Accelerated Tests, and Pitfalls of Accelerated Testing

  5. Parameter Estimation of Accelerated Life Models

    • Probability Distributions Used in Engineering-based Parametric Models: Normal, Lognormal, Weibull, Exponential distributions and Applications to Parametric Life Models
    • Estimation of Parameters of Life Models (Probability Plotting, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, and Bayesian Estimation)
    • Estimation of Uncertainties: Modeling, Characterizing, and Making Reliability Decisions Under Uncertainty

  6. Hands-on Exercises Using Software Tools