Practical reliability testing of structures under road loadings

In today´s global environment, accelerated life testing is becoming a competitive advantage when time spent from conceptual stage to the final product development needs to be minimized (project costs and development time) in order to be successful. Using accelerated life testing techniques for mechanical an d structural applications have strong challenges when defining the loading but also the fatigue life to represent actual field performance. Such common problems as well as some helpful strategies using accelerated life testing are presented for faster planning of structural testing. Examples from the transport refrigeration industry are used to demonstrate the utility of this strategy. Loading and test fixtures were designed as needed to simulate the normal operating levels and to accelerate specific failure modes while replicating field performance. In conclusion the test and analysis were effectively used to increase the degree of reliability improvements and to reduce the total number of test hours resulting in a shorter design cycle.