RELIABILITY TESTING AND DEMONSTRATION

This paper deals with various techniques for reliability testing and demonstration of products/components as applicable to space systems in order to assess the minimum achieved reliability. The most rigorous method is demonstration in statistical sense which calls for a large number of tests/long testing time. In such cases where the testing under normal conditions takes a long period, a method called 'accelerated life testing' is used. This is used to get information quickly on specific lives, life distributions, failure rates, mean lives and reliabilities, by applying higher levels of temperature, voltage, pressure, vibration, amplitude, frequency, cycling rate, humidity, etc. than encountered under use conditions. In this paper some of the accelerated life models are discussed. Actual case studies conducted are also included in this paper.