abstract: Accelerated life testing (ALT) is the process of subjecting a product to stress conditions (temperatures, voltage, pressure etc.) in excess of its normal operating levels to accelerate failures. Product failure typically results from multiple stresses acting on it simultaneously. Multi-stress factor ALTs are challenging as they increase the number of experiments due to the stress factor-level combinations resulting from the increased number of factors. Chapter 2 provides an approach for designing ALT plans with multiple stresses utilizing Latin hypercube designs that reduces the simulation cost without loss of statistical efficiency. A comparison to full grid and large-sample approximation methods illustrates the approach computational cost gain and flexibility in determining optimal stress settings with less assumptions and more intuitive unit allocations. Implicit in the design criteria of current ALT designs is the assumption that the form of the acceleration model is correct. This is unrealistic assumption in many real-world problems. Chapter 3 provides an approach for ALT optimum design for model discrimination. We utilize the Hellinger distance measure between predictive distributions. The optimal ALT plan at three stress levels was determined and its performance was compared to good compromise plan, best traditional plan and well-known 4:2:1 compromise test plans. In the case of linear versus quadratic ALT models, the proposed method increased the test plan's ability to distinguish among competing models and provided better guidance as to which model is appropriate for the experiment. Chapter 4 extends the approach of Chapter 3 to ALT sequential model discrimination. An initial experiment is conducted to provide maximum possible information with respect to model discrimination. The follow-on experiment is planned by leveraging the most current information to allow for Bayesian model comparison through posterior model probability ratios. Results showed that performance of plan is adversely impacted by the amount of censoring in the data, in the case of linear vs. quadratic model form at three levels of constant stress, sequential testing can improve model recovery rate by approximately 8% when data is complete, but no apparent advantage in adopting sequential testing was found in the case of right-censored data when censoring is in excess of a certain amount. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Industrial Engineering 2014

Accelerated life tests (ALT) are appealing to practitioners seeking to maximize information gleaned from reliability studies, while navigating resource constraints due to time and specimen costs. A popular approach to accelerated life testing is to design test regimes such that experimental specimens are exposed to variable stress levels across time. Such ALT experiments allow the practitioner to observe lifetime behavior across various stress levels and infer product life at use conditions using a greater number of failures than would otherwise be observed with a constant stress experiment. The downside to accelerated life tests, however, particularly for those that utilize non-constant stress levels across time on test, is that the corresponding lifetime models are largely dependent upon assumptions pertaining to variant stress. Although these assumptions drive inference at product use conditions, little to no statistical methods exist for assessing their validity. One popular assumption that is prevalent in both literature and practice is the cumulative exposure model which assumes that, at a given time on test, specimen life is solely driven by the integrated stress history and that current lifetime behavior is path independent of the stress trajectory. This dissertation challenges such black box ALT modeling procedures and focuses on the cumulative exposure model in particular. For a simple strep-stress accelerated life test, using two constant stress levels across time on test, we propose a four-parameter Weibull lifetime model that utilizes a threshold parameter to account for the stress transition. To circumvent regularity conditions imposed by maximum likelihood procedures, we use median rank regression to fit and assess our lifetime model. We improve the model fit using a novel incorporation of desirability functions and ultimately evaluate our proposed methods using an extensive simulation study. Finally, we provide an illustrative example to highlight the implementation of our method, comparing it to a corresponding Bayesian analysis. / Ph. D. / Have you ever wondered how manufacturers determine the guaranteed lifetime warranty for the products they produce? From automotive showrooms to store shelves, consumer goods often have a unique story to tell, one involving meticulous research, engineered design, and statistically driven testing. This is the realm of accelerated life testing (ALT) where reliability engineers, in their e↵orts to estimate overall product life, subject test specimens to harsher conditions than what are expected under normal operating conditions. Ideally, ALT experiments will induce multiple failures in a short amount of time and provide a basis for statistical modeling to predict failure in the field. The problem with this, however, is that such experiments require many mathematical assumptions which describe the physics of failure. This dissertation challenges one of the most common assumptions used for ALT experiments when specimens are exposed to multiple stress levels. We develop an alternative approach to the analysis of ALT data which drops this assumption (referred to as cumulative exposure) and explore the statistical properties of our method. We find that our approach has many features which will appeal to practitioners who may wish to use our procedures as they seek to understand the data gleaned from ALT experiments. Overall, this work represents an important addition to the reliability practitioner’s toolbox and will allow researchers to avoid potentially dubious assumptions concerning real world behavior.

The service life and electrocatalytic activity of tantalum oxide/iridium oxide coated titanium plate and mesh anodes used in the electrolytic production of chromic acid were investigated by performing accelerated life tests, voltammetric and chronoamperometric measurements in chrome (VI) solutions. Experimental results showed that the service life for the coated mesh anode was 1059 hours, compared to 828 hours for the plate anode at a current density of 1.2 A cm-2. In addition, the coating failed earlier in higher chromic acid concentration. Physical analysis by SEM and EDS before and after accelerated life test confirmed that the deactivation was a result of corrosion of IrO2 followed by titanium substrate passivation. A simple and rapid method for assessing the electrocatalytic activity of iridium–tantalum oxide coating based on a chronoamperometric technique was developed.

Accelerated life testing (ALT) has been widely used in collecting failure time data of highly reliable products. Most parametric ALT models assume that the ALT data follows a specific probability distribution. However, the assumed distribution may not be adequate in describing the underlying failure time distribution. In this dissertation, a more generic method based on a phase-type distribution is presented to model ALT data. To estimate the parameters of such Erlang Coxian-based ALT models, both a mathematical programming approach and a maximum likelihood method are developed. To the best of our knowledge, this dissertation demonstrates, for the first time, the potential of using PH distributions for ALT data analysis. To shorten the test time of ALT, degradation tests have been studied as a useful alternative. Among many degradation tests, destructive degradation tests (DDT) have attracted much attention in reliability engineering. Moreover, some materials/products start degrading only after a random degradation initiation time that is often not even observable. In this dissertation, two-stage delayed-degradation models are developed to evaluate the reliability of a product with random initiation time. For homogeneous and heterogeneous populations, fixed-effects and random-effects Gamma processes are considered, respectively. An expectation-maximization algorithm and a bootstrap method are developed to facilitate the maximum likelihood estimation of model parameters and to construct the confidence intervals of the interested reliability index, respectively. With an Accelerated DDT model, an optimal test plan is presented to improve the statistical efficiency. In designing the ADDT experiment, decision variables related to the experiment must be determined under the constraints on limited resources, such as the number of test units and the total testing time. In this dissertation, the number of test units and stress level are pre-determined in planning an ADDT experiment. The goal is to improve the statistical efficiency by selecting appropriately allocate the test units to different stress levels to minimize the asymptotic variance of the estimator of the p-quantile of failure time. In particular, considering the random degradation initiation time, a three-level constant-stress destructive degradation test is studied. A mathematical programming problem is formulated to minimize the asymptotic variance of reliability estimate.

The subject of this diploma thesis is the design and the development of accelerated Life test of Ball-joint in cooperation with company TRW-DAS a. s. The diploma thesis includes a review about accelerated life tests on specialized tests made by the company. In the thesis are analyzed the preparations of accelerated life tests, the implementation and verification by experiment. The thesis also includes the computer strain simulation of Ball-Joint by FEM software.

<p>  </p> <p>Environmental challenges, increasing energy costs and demand, and upcoming regulations (e.g., new equipment performance ratings, phase-down of HFCs) are a few of the main drivers behind the research on advanced HVAC&R equipment. The HVAC&R systems are one of the largest energy consumers in both commercial and residential buildings and their operation is essential to ensure thermal comfort as well as other industrial needs. Within this context, large chillers provide chilled water to condition commercial buildings and the new generation of smart chillers feature variable speed compressors that enable active capacity modulation. In turn, variable speed operation along with other factors can contribute to performance degradation. Understanding mechanisms of degradation and developing models that enable predicting the decrease in performance with respect to the rated values are still open topics in the literature. </p> <p>The overarching goal of this research is to investigate the performance degradation of a water-cooled variable-speed screw chiller under long term operation and to gain insights on the behavior of the chiller under accelerated life testing. In particular, this thesis covers the initial task of designing an experimental test setup that enables performance testing according to the AHRI 550/590 standard. Once the experimental setup was commissioned, a set of four standard-conform baseline tests was conducted to map the rated performance of the chiller at both full and part-load conditions. After completing the baseline tests, an accelerated life test cycle procedure was developed and implemented in order to conduct 24/7 automated testing on the chiller. To this end, two test modes were established to simulate a real-life use of the chiller and induce high level of thermo-mechanical stresses on the compressor. Furthermore, eight recurring baseline tests were conducted to determine the performance behavior after 1000 operating hours. Finally, a preliminary system model was set up. This thesis describes the design of the system, the commissioning and control and provides insights on the performance testing as well as long-term testing methodology and the modeling work that was done so far. </p>

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This thesis focuses on the development of a novel polymer based housing for power thyristor devices typically used in long distance high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission. Power thyristor devices used in HVDC power conversion stations are typically packaged in a hermetically sealed ceramic housing and have demonstrated an excellent history of reliability and performance. However, to avoid increasing the number of thyristors in future higher powered HVDC schemes thyristors having higher power ratings at 8.5 kV and sizes at 125 mm and 150 mm diameters are sought for implementation to achieve higher transmission ratings of, for example, 4000 A at +/- 800 kV. The main disadvantages of such large ceramic-based packages are higher processing cost and weight whilst robustness is also a concern. To overcome these issues, replacing the current ceramic housing with a polymeric material has been investigated in this project. The advantages it is anticipated such packages will provide include lower cost, less weight, robustness, recyclability, etc. However, some challenges it will also offer are: non-hermeticity i.e. polymers are moisture and gas permeable, potentially more complex manufacturing routes, and different electrical, mechanical and thermal properties compared to ceramic materials. The work presented in this thesis was part of a larger project where these challenges have been addressed by developing and testing a prototype polymeric thyristor housing. The prototype is aimed at demonstrating that polymer packages can deliver performance and reliability comparable to, if not better than, current ceramic packages. In this thesis, it is the package development and reliability related studies that are discussed. Because the housings will experience severe electrical stresses and various thermal excursions during their service life, the electrical and thermo-mechanical behaviour of the polymer housing was studied using finite element analysis to gain an understanding of the effects of various design variables and materials properties on performance and the tradeoffs between performance and manufacturability. From these modelling studies, design guidelines have been established for the future development of polymer housings. On the other hand, to identify the physics-of-failure of the prototype that was manufactured as part of the project, accelerated life tests were performed to study its reliability. The knowledge gained from the polymer prototype development was then applied to the design of a larger 125 mm diameter housing using the Taguchi method of experimental design.

Em sistemas modernos de manutenção inteligente a qualidade de uma máquina ou equipamento depende do suporte que é fornecido junto com esse produto, com a confiabilidade e segurança na utilização do mesmo. Estas exigências, por vezes, não são cumpridas e podem estar indisponíveis em algumas máquinas. Este trabalho descreve uma abordagem utilizando sinais de vibração coletados em tempo real com falhas como estudo preliminar para uma abordagem mais profunda como estudo dametodologia de testes de vida acelerado para auxiliar durante a fase de vida operacional permitindo ao fabricante a determinação dos ciclos de vida do produto. A abordagem proposta construída em cima de experiências anteriores em desenvolvimento no projeto Integração de Sistemas Inteligentes de Manutenção e Cadeia de Fornecimento de Peças Sobressalentes. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar resultados preliminares analisando a variabilidade das assinaturas de falhas das engrenagens danificadas de maneira a permitir a identificação dos ciclos de vida do produto para partes específicas de um atuador elétrico. / In modern systems of intelligent maintenance the quality of a machine or equipment depends on the support that comes with this product, with the reliability and safety in the use of it. These requirements are sometimes not met and may be unavailable on some machines. This paper describes an approach using vibration signals collected in real-time with faults as a preliminary study for a deeper approach with the study of the methodology of accelerated life tests to assist during the operational life stage allowing the manufacturer the determination of the life cycles of product. The proposed approach built on previous experiences under development in the project Integration of Intelligent Systems of Maintenance and Chain of Supply of Spares. The objective of this work is to present preliminary results analyzing the variability of failure signatures of the damaged gears in order to allow the identification of product life cycles for specific parts of an electric actuator.

Em sistemas modernos de manutenção inteligente a qualidade de uma máquina ou equipamento depende do suporte que é fornecido junto com esse produto, com a confiabilidade e segurança na utilização do mesmo. Estas exigências, por vezes, não são cumpridas e podem estar indisponíveis em algumas máquinas. Este trabalho descreve uma abordagem utilizando sinais de vibração coletados em tempo real com falhas como estudo preliminar para uma abordagem mais profunda como estudo dametodologia de testes de vida acelerado para auxiliar durante a fase de vida operacional permitindo ao fabricante a determinação dos ciclos de vida do produto. A abordagem proposta construída em cima de experiências anteriores em desenvolvimento no projeto Integração de Sistemas Inteligentes de Manutenção e Cadeia de Fornecimento de Peças Sobressalentes. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar resultados preliminares analisando a variabilidade das assinaturas de falhas das engrenagens danificadas de maneira a permitir a identificação dos ciclos de vida do produto para partes específicas de um atuador elétrico. / In modern systems of intelligent maintenance the quality of a machine or equipment depends on the support that comes with this product, with the reliability and safety in the use of it. These requirements are sometimes not met and may be unavailable on some machines. This paper describes an approach using vibration signals collected in real-time with faults as a preliminary study for a deeper approach with the study of the methodology of accelerated life tests to assist during the operational life stage allowing the manufacturer the determination of the life cycles of product. The proposed approach built on previous experiences under development in the project Integration of Intelligent Systems of Maintenance and Chain of Supply of Spares. The objective of this work is to present preliminary results analyzing the variability of failure signatures of the damaged gears in order to allow the identification of product life cycles for specific parts of an electric actuator.