High Accelerated Life Test (HALT)

The abbreviation HALT is derived from the phrase “highly accelerated life test”, which stands for highly accelerated life test. Highly accelerated (or highly accelerated) life testing is a stress testing method for improving product reliability where prototypes are challenged to a much higher degree than would be expected from actual use to identify weaknesses in the product's design or manufacturing.

In general, life testing analyzes lifetime data, i.e. times to failure or suspension times, for an example of a unit operating under normal conditions to measure and make predictions about the lifetime characteristics of the product. However, for many reasons, manufacturers want to achieve reliability results faster than they can when data comes from products operating under normal conditions. In this case, accelerated life tests are performed to capture life data for the product under accelerated stress conditions that cause faster failure of the units. Accelerated testing performed correctly reduces test times significantly, resulting in faster time-to-market, lower product development costs and warranty costs, as well as other expenses.

There are various accelerated testing approaches. The high accelerated life test (HALT) is one of them. Accelerated testing methods can be qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative accelerated testing (for example, HALT) is used to reveal possible failure modes for the product first so engineers can improve product design. These tests are performed on small samples where the test samples are exposed to a single level of severe stress, for example, stress cycling, cold to heat, and similar conditions. If the sample does not change its form, it passes the test. Otherwise, measures are taken to improve the design of the product to eliminate the causes of failure identified during testing.

The highly accelerated life test (HALT) quickly reveals failure modes that would occur under normal use, but not failure modes that would never occur in real life. In these tests, one or more voltage types are selected that cause the product to fail under normal usage conditions. This may include temperature, voltage, humidity, vibration or other types of stress that directly affect the life of the product under normal use conditions.

High accelerated life tests are developed and proven methods for finding design flaws and weaknesses in electronic and electromechanical assemblies. In this way, it is aimed to release more reliable products quickly to the market.

Specially designed systems provide temperature stresses, rapid thermal cycling, and random, triaxial vibrations that quickly reveal design weaknesses and product issues. The stresses (strains) are transmitted mainly in one order:

• thermal step stress
• cold step stress
• hot step stress
• Fast thermal pass cycle
• vibration step stress
• unified environment
• Fast thermal transition cycle and vibration step stress

At each applied stress level, functional tests are performed on the product sample to evaluate its operation. When a fault occurs, the fault mode and stress level are recorded, the fault location is isolated, and the root cause of the fault is determined. A temporary fix is ​​applied and testing continues to reveal further faults. As failure modes are found and eliminated, the limits are pushed further, maximizing margins and increasing product life and reliability.

In short, highly accelerated life tests (HALT) and highly accelerated stress scans (HASS) are designed to be a faster and more efficient method of fault finding than conventional testing methods. With these tests, the design and testing processes of the product under development are accelerated and failures in the field or for the consumer are reduced.

High accelerated life test (HALT) services are among the numerous test, measurement, analysis and evaluation studies given to businesses by our organization.