Abstract
Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) is a product ruggedization methodology in which stresses are applied to the product that are well beyond normal specification, shipping, storage assembly process and in-use levels. HALT to improve electronic product reliability is one of the most rapidly growing areas of environmental testing. The dramatic growth in the use of HALT method is due to its ability to quickly and cheaply identify many failures from the early design that would show up as failures in the field. HALT, one of the newer applications of step stress testing, is applied to prototype hardware during the first stages of the product concept design to improve the product reliability. This methodology will define and improve upon the technological limits of the product, before the product goes into full production.
Although the HALT method is widely utilized to improve the reliability of office and telecomunication electronics, it has not been as widely applied to automotive electronics.
This paper presents an overview of the HALT method applied to Smart Junction Boxes for the automotive industry as well as the technological limits defined by four HALT parameters which are:
Lower Operating Limit (LOL) and Upper Operating Limit (UOL) defined as stress levels at which the product still function with no failures at all, just before it experiences recoverable failures (soft failures) and Lower Destruct Limit (LDL) and Upper Destruct Limit (UDL) defined as the stress levels the product could take before it experiences non-recoverable failures (hard failures)