System level reliability testing for high reliability devices

Purpose of this study was to investigate system level reliability for electronic devices intended to be used in industrial use conditions. The reliability of such devices should be extremely high, the intended useful lifetime being in the range of 10 to 30 years. Testing reliability of such devices can be seen difficult with limited amount of time and keeping the failure modes same as in the real use conditions. In this paper, efforts of tackling this problem are described. Compatible modified standard tests and multiple environmental overstress tests (MEOST) are sought for to minimize the test duration and maximizing the achieved result accuracy. In the case of the used devices, MEOST test has given good correspondence between the failure mechanisms comparing the use and test condition failures, and the failures were produced in a relatively short amount of time.