In an increasingly harsh economic context (tighter performance requirements, shorter
development cycles, reduced cost of ownership, etc.), it is essential to ensure product
maturity rapidly and, in any case, by the time of commissioning.
It is with a view to remedying shortcomings in traditional development methods that "highly
accelerated" tests have been developed. The main underlying principle behind this new type
of test strategy is as follows: rather than reasoning in terms of conformity with a specification
and simply performing conventional tests, we on the contrary attempt to push the product to
its limits by applying environmental stresses and/or stimuli of levels higher than the
specification. The aim is thus to take full advantage of current technologies, by eliminating
defects which generate potential failures, as of the first prototypes.
A well-conducted accelerated test process should, in a relatively short time, lead to a
significant increase in the robustness of a product, as early as the initial prototypes stage at
the beginning of the development phase, thus accelerating early maturity of this product.
Furthermore, identification of the margins available on a "mature" product helps design and
size its future environmental stress screening profile more accurately, by increasing the
severity of the loadings applied to just what is needed, leading to a particularly significant
boost in the efficiency of this environmental stress screening process.