Multifactor ageing facilities for qualifying electrical insulation

Accelerated life testing of critical components relies on a perception by engineers of the failure mechanisms that are most likely to occur. The classical approach of testing one condition at a time is no longer considered satisfactory. On the other hand, multifactor testing runs the risk of unrepresentative combinations of external constraints and also nonequivalent acceleration factors. This presentation will extend beyond a simple description of test facilities and will consider the effectiveness of various test regimes that are in use at present. The aim is to establish the important synergistic ageing reactions that are likely to occur but keeping the number of individual constraints down to three