Highly Accelerated Life Testing for avionics devices

In avionics application one of the most important competition factors is the reliability, given that the failure occurrence may leads to a critical state for the functioning of the aircraft. Some avionics apparatus are intolerant of failures, as lives may depend on the reliable functioning of equipment. Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) is a time compression testing protocol that utilizes a step stress approach in subjecting products to varied thermal and vibration stresses. It is used to uncover design limitations and weaknesses in the preliminary design phase, helping designers to find and fix errors before they occur during the application in the field. The goal of HALT testing is to break the product by subjecting the test unit to progressively higher stress levels, incorporating thermal dwells, rapid temperature transitions, varied vibration stresses, and a combination of temperature and vibration to precipitate inherent defects. In this paper the HALT process related to an avionic equipment is described and a specific test plant is discussed.