Dr. William R. Porter : Design of Accelerated Thermal Degradation Experiments

Posted by , part of the Statistics and Data Science Seminar.

At

Oct. 19, 2005, 3:30 p.m.

In

SEO 512

Abstract

Accelerated testing of product quality attributes is an important tool used in the development of new products. Many products fail to meet quality specifications after storage for prolonged times due to degradation of the materials used to manufacture the product. The time to failure is the shelf life of the product. Thermal stress is often used as an accelerant to promote degradation in a controlled manner to predict shelf life. The results of stress degradation experiments are evaluated using the nonlinear Arrhenius kinetic model. Historical methods of fitting the Arrhenius model to thermal degradation experimental data, particularly the Garrett approach, will be discussed. Optimal design of thermal degradation experiments from a theoretical basis has been described in the literature but many practical pitfalls remain. Nonlinear model design requires knowledge of the model parameters, crude estimates of which can be obtained using a pilot experiment. Monte Carlo evaluation of the design of a pilot experiment will be discussed, along with opportunities for future development of practical designs for refining parameter estimates.

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