Sometimes shifting your perspective is more powerful than being smart.
Astro Teller
It is generally known that HALT testing means destroying a product with stepped stresses. Most experts agree that HALT doesn’t’ provide much information about life and the acronym of HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test) is wrong.
Indeed, the HALT is more like determining safety margins on stresses. On the other hand, the stresses in the HALT are distributed over time – the first step for 10 hours, the second step for another 10 hours, and so on. In total, the product worked for 40 hours to failure. Therefore, the Lifetime in the HALT is contained implicitly.
If we can be brave add the test time to the HALT stress set and conduct a test (in your terminology, stepped) for one, two, three… operating time. “Life is a dangerous thing. It leads to death” (Stanislaw J. Lec)
Now we see that the HALT is the Life Test. We test aircraft engine Critical Parts on triple Time Limits for type certification. This is a typical HALT, don’t you think?
Oleg, it was an interesting read! HALT testing aims to bring robustness into products from the beginning of their development cycle. A product is subjected to rapidly escalating mechanical and thermal stressors during a HALT test until it fails. HALT testing provides vital hints for developers to determine the cause of errors, take remedial steps, and ultimately deliver high-quality, trustworthy products.
Thank you Kelvin
HALT is applied to electronics usually.
I am interested in expanding the scope of the HALT to other products. It can be used to demonstrate and certify gas turbine engines for example.