An analysis of accelerated performance degradation tests assuming the Arrhenius stress-relationship

An analytical model is developed for accelerated performance degradation tests. The performance degradations of products at a specified exposure time are assumed to follow a normal distribution. It is assumed that the relationship between the location parameter of normal distribution and the exposure time is a linear function of the exposure time that the slope coefficient of the linear relationship has an Arrhenius dependence on temperature, and that the scale parameter of the normal distribution is constant and independent of temperature or exposure time. The method of maximum likelihood estimation is used to estimate the parameters involved. The likelihood function for the accelerated performance degradation data is derived. The approximated variance-covariance matrix is also derived for calculating approximated confidence intervals of maximum likelihood estimates. Finally we use two real examples for estimating the failure-time distribution, technically defined as the time when performance degrades below a specified level.