Accelerated life test of electromagnetic contactor using a transient recovery voltage

Accelerated life testing consists of a variety of test methods for shortening the life of products or hastening the degradation of their performance. The aim of such testing is to quickly obtain data which, properly modeled and analyzed, yield desired information on product life or performance under normal use. Such testing saves much time and money. Nowadays, reducing product lead time is a hot issue. The critical problem in lead time reduction is shortening the life test time. In this paper, the accelerated life test method using a transient recovery voltage is discussed. The test results are analyzed using Anderson-darling method, and the acceleration factor is obtained using the maximum likelihood estimation method.