Reliability assessment of degradation product based on accelerated factor

The degradation path based approaches are often used to evaluate reliability of degradation product. Since traditional approaches based on degradation path cannot be used to determine lifetime distribution type, a new approach based on accelerated factor was proposed. The key characteristic of the approach is that all the pseudo lifetimes at each accelerated stress level are converted to the lifetimes at operating stress level by accelerated factor. Thus, the optimal lifetime distribution type can be determined by taking all the converted lifetimes as a whole with Anderson-Darling goodness-of-fit test, and then reliability assessment can be implemented. The proposed approach was illustrated and validated by conducting an accelerated degradation test on a certain type of electrical connector. The reliability of electrical connector was evaluated, and the result showed that the approach based on accelerated factor was valuable.