HALT - Highly Accelerated Life Testing

HALT is an effective tool used during the product development phase to precipitate dormant design related failures to the surface, where they can be diagnosed, and corrected before the product is introduced to mass manufacturing.

In addition, HALT will identify the weakest points in a system or product that requires ‘ruggedizing’ to increase the overall reliability of the product. These weak points will often lead to failures in the field some months, or even years after general product release.

Brief Summary

The goal of HALT is to improve the products operating margins by discovering and correcting failures until the Fundamental Limit of Technology (FLT) is achieved. At this point the margins should be wide enough to ensure failures within the published environmental operating specification of the product do not occur in the field.The HALT process is used to identify the weakest points in a system. These weak points are realized through the application of higher than usual stress levels, for short periods of time in a controlled environment. All failure modes are then driven to failure cause, and corrective actions are implemented to prevent such failures occurring in the field.

Weaknesses are identified by:

• Defining the upper and lower temperature operating limits.
• Defining the upper and lower temperature destruct limits.
• Defining the vibration operating and destruct limits.
• Determining and document all failure modes.

After conducting HALT, you will understand your product a lot better then before you started. You will know when the product fails, what failed, and will have an idea of how to fix the failure(s). Knowledge is power, and the more you know about your product the more ammunition you have against your competitors.

There are five stages to a traditional HALT test:

• Cold Step Stress
• Hot Step Stress
• Rapid Thermal Transitions
• Vibration Step Stress
• Combined Environment

Summary of Failures Found Vs HALT Test Step

All data accummulated over 50 new products.

Summary of Software Vs Hardware Failures During HALT

All data accummulated over 50 new products.