Digital Commons Network^™

Optimum Design On Step-Stress Life Testing, C. Xiong

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

This paper presents exact optimum test plans for simple time-step stress models in accelerated life testing. An exponential life distribution with a mean that is a log-linear function of stress, and a cumulative exposure model are assumed. Maximum likelihood methods are used to estimate the parameters of such models. Optimum test plans are obtained by minimizing the mean square error between the maximum likelihood estimate of a certain moment of the lifetime at a design stress and the real moment. The advantage of our optimum test plans is that it does not require large number of items to be tested. …