Title: Development of acceleration factors for reliability testing of mechanical equipment

Authors: John W. Evans; Guangming Chen; Jillian Y. Evans; James Bartos

Addresses: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Risk and Reliability Analysis Branch, 8800 Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Morgan State University, 1700 E Cold Spring Ln, Baltimore, Maryland 21251, USA ' Quentech, 14913 Wellwood Road, Silver Spring, MD 20905, USA ' International TechneGroup Incorporated, 5303 Dupont Cir, Milford, OH 45150, USA

Abstract: Accelerated life tests allow for reduction of test time to demonstrate targeted life of a component for a given level of reliability. This is accomplished by increasing loads on the component or by compressing the time scale in relation to the service environment. The acceleration factor provides a quantitative estimate of the relationship between the test condition and the field condition for this purpose. This paper provides a detailed process, for developing acceleration factor models for reliability testing of mechanical components. Several examples are given for various types of mechanical components undergoing wear-out processes.

Keywords: reliability testing; life testing; acceleration factors; accelerated tests; mechanical equipment; component lifetime; wear out.

DOI: 10.1504/IJQET.2014.064394

International Journal of Quality Engineering and Technology, 2014 Vol.4 No.3, pp.213 - 224

Received: 20 Jan 2014
Accepted: 29 Jan 2014

Published online: 13 Sep 2014 *

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