Optimal Design of Accelerated Life Tests with Different Censoring Times

This paper presents optimal accelerated life test plans with different censoring times for exponential, Weibull, and lognormal lifetime distributions, respectively. For an optimal plan, low stress level, proportion of test units allocated and censoring time at each stress are determined such that the asymptotic variance of the maximum likelihood estimator of a certain quantile at use condition is minimized. The proposed plans are compared with the corresponding optimal plans with a common censoring time over range of parameter values. Computational results indicate that those plans are statistically optimal ones in terms of accuracy of estimator when total censoring times of two plans are equal.