Development of Optimal Accelerated Life Test Plans for Weibull Distribution Under Intermittent Inspection

For Weibull distributed lifetimes, this paper presents asymptotically optimal accelerated life test plans for practical applications under intermittent inspection and type-I censoring. Computational results show that the asymptotic variance of a low quantile at the design stress as optimal criterion is insensitive to the number of inspections at overstress levels. Sensitivity analyses indicate that optimal plans are robust enough to moderate departures of estimated failure probabilities at the design and high stresses as input parameters to plan accelerated life tests from their true values. Monte Carlo simulation for small sample study on optimal accelerated life test plans developed by the asymptotic maximum likelihood theory is conducted. Simulation results suggest that optimal plans are satisfactory for sample size in practice.