Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT)

Highly accelerated life testing (HALT) is a stress testing method for increasing product reliability. This test method is currently used by major manufacturing and research and development organizations to improve product reliability in a variety of industries, including electronics, computers, medicine, and the military.

Highly accelerated life testing techniques are important in revealing the weaknesses of a new product. These tests quickly find weaknesses using accelerated stress conditions. The purpose of this testing method is to proactively find weaknesses and fix them, thereby increasing product reliability.

Highly accelerated life tests find weaknesses and defects early in the design phase by testing the product to failure, while highly accelerated stress scanning catches manufacturing defects in production parts before installation, without reducing the life of the part. It also provides valuable data for component-level reliability measurements. The biggest benefit of test results is that it prevents costly redesign later in the product development cycle.

Unlike other environmental simulation chambers, highly accelerated life test chambers offer fast temperature ramp rates (up to 60 degrees per minute) and combine thermal, vibration and shock simulation in one apparatus.

The highly accelerated life profile consists of several parts defined by the product's intended end-use environment:

• Cold step voltage and hot step voltage: Gradually lowering or increasing the temperature to identify product limitations.
• Vibration step stress: Gradually increasing the vibration levels while pausing on the way to see how the product responds.
• Rapid thermal transitions (or thermal shock): Exposing the product to predefined maximum and minimum temperatures and rapidly switching between them.
• Composite environment: Simulating real-world conditions where the product will be exposed to multiple random environments at the same time.

In short, highly accelerated life testing is a product reliability test performed during the design process to discover a product's weak links before the design is complete.

Our organization also provides highly accelerated life test (HALT) services with its trained and expert staff and advanced technological equipment, among the numerous test, measurement, analysis and evaluation studies it provides for businesses in various sectors.