A cost-driven reliability demonstration plan based on accelerated degradation tests

Abstract Reliability demonstration tests (RDTs) have been widely adopted to verify reliability requirements of manufacturing products. In practice, due to the limited resource and tight development schedule for new products, it is preferable to determine the decision variables including the termination time and the sample size for the RDT in advance. Existing degradation models often fail to capture the nonlinear degradation characteristics of testing items with complicated degradation mechanisms. This paper proposes a reliability demonstration method using an accelerated degradation test (ADT) in the context of a nonlinear random-coefficients model. First, we present the capabilities of the proposed ADT model to degradation data. Then, the cost-effective RDT plan is derived based on two types of decision risks and reliability requirements from both producers and customers, while meeting certain testing time constraints. The proposed method is illustrated using two practical examples. Finally, sensitivity analysis is provided to evaluate the robustness of the proposed RDT plan using ADT data.