Considerable attention has been paid recently to the behaviour of the hazard rate function h(t) as a function of time. This discussion has led to a lot of speculation as to the shape of the traditional 'bathtub' curve showing failure or hazard rate as a function of time. Studies at the International Electronics Reliability Institute (IERI) at Loughborough University of Technology, in the United Kingdom, have recently been examining in detail the database created from field failure returns on a wide spectrum of electronic components. These components are in equipment subject to a spread of environmental conditions. The database created has been exercised with particular reference to the behaviour of MOS ICS, rectangular connectors, bipolar transistors and pn-junction diodes. Data has been analysed using pooled information from a wide variety of sources and also from two specific environmental conditions, ground benign and ground mobile.The results of this analysis are presented and the failure intensities as a function of time are given at 1000 hour intervals up to a total time of 21,000 hours. Confidence limits at the 95 per cent X2 level are also given. The results show a rapidly falling failure intensity for the first few thousand hours and after this time the failure intensity appears to be relatively constant given the accuracy obtainable with the data available.
KEY WORDS Electronic components Reliability Time dependent behaviour
BACKGROUNDThe collection of electronic component reliability data from the field has been under way at IERI for a period of four years or so. Data has been collected
This paper describes the organization that has been evolved for the collection and analysis of field failure data. A summary breakdown is given of the data collection organization, the Data Format and the methodology of Data Analysis.
Preliminary studies show the system is working.
The concept of superpopulation has been established in order to judge the relative importance of data as it is accumulated.
This paper briefly describes work that is in hand on establishing and running an organization for the collection and analysis of field failure data on passive and active components in electronic equipment. Data have now been collected from all the sources for nearly two and a half years as of June 1989 and the results obtained are presented. Analysis covers a wide range of electronic component categories.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.