Product Maturity 1

6Aggravated Tests

There are many articles and books that offer very precise details of aggravated tests; this is beyond the scope of this chapter. Although a concise description of these tests is provided here, the fundamental aim of this chapter is to explore how these tests relate to product maturity.

6.1. Definition

In the context of this chapter, aggravated tests can be defined as follows:

Tests that submit the product or some of its constituent elements to (climatic, electrical, mechanical) constraints that are progressively increased to values significantly higher than those specified, within the product operation and/or destruction limits.

According to the manufacturers, the above strict definition of aggravated tests does not cover all these practices, particularly in terms of scale of application (the product), application technique (no bias on the value of constraints seen by the product) and even final purpose of the tests.

6.2. Objectives of aggravated tests

There are numerous articles, documents, presentations, etc. on aggravated tests, which include the following points on the use of conducting aggravated tests (McLean 2009):

• – improve product robustness by applying quite serious stresses;
• – highlight the potential weaknesses inherent to product design and to the technologies involved;
• – estimate design margins, as illustrated below;
• – at the card or subassembly level, make a selection based on various technologies or various providers and choose the most ...