A multiple stress, multiple component stress screening cost model

Abstract

Environmental stress screening is used to enhance reliability by decreasing the number of failures experienced during customer use. It is suggested that added benefit can be gained by applying multiple stresses rather than a single stress, as is done presently. A further modification is to apply the stress at the assembly level, accelerating different types of components at the same time. Different component E A e acceleration effects must then be considered.

The problem these modifications present is how to choose the appropriate stress levels and the time duration of the stress screen. A cost model is developed that trades off the cost of a field failure with the cost of applying a multiple stress, multiple component stress screen. The objective is to minimize this cost function in order to find an economical stress regimen.

The problem is solved using the software package GINO. The interesting result is that if a stress is used at all during the stress screen, the maximum amount of stress is the economic choice. Either the cost of stressing is low enough to justify the use of a stress, in which case the maximum amount of stress is used, or the cost is too high and the stress is not used at all.