Accelerated life test plans under intermittent inspection and Type I censoring: The case of Weibull failure distribution

For the case where the lifetime at a stress level has a Weibull distribution, statistically optimal and practical accelerated life test plans are developed under the assumptions of intermittent inspection and Type I censoring. For a statistically optimal plan the low stress level, the proportion of test units allocated, and the inspection times are determined such that the asymptotic variance of the maximum-likelihood estimator of a certain quantile at the use condition is minimized. Although the practical plan adopts the same design criterion, it involves three rather than two overstress levels and easily calculated inspection schemes. Despite some loss in efficiency the practical plan has several advantages over the statistically optimal one. For instance, the practical plan can provide means for checking the validity of the assumptions made, may reduce the danger of extrapolation, and is more convenient to determine and implement. Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate the relative efficiency of a practical plan to the corresponding statistically optimal plan. Guidelines for selecting an appropriate practical plan are also described with an example.