A Study on the Accelerated Life Test for Evaluating the Reliability of Nickel-Cadmium Batteries

Accelerated testing consists of a variety of test methods for shortening the life of products or hastening the degradation of their performance. This paper presents practical, modern statistical methods for evaluating the reliability of Nickel-Cadmium batteries at their design temperature of 2$0^{\circ}C$ by accelerated life test. Batteries have been life tested at three high temperature conditions, 50, 60, 7$0^{\circ}C$, respectively to yield failures quickly. The failures have been observed and judged by means of charge and discharge current integration. Analyses of life data from those conditions resulted in the Weibull distribution, which has been verified on the ground of the Kolmogorov-smirnov test and the pairwise t-test. Life data are modeled according to the Arrhenius life-temperature relationship. The mean life of tested batteries is assessed at about 590 cycles, and the activation energy of this chemical reaction is concluded to be 0.39eV as results. This study provides procedures for estimating the reliability of batteries in a short period, which has little been possible in domestic industries. The results can be applied in many fields such as proof testing, acceptance testing, and estimating assurance periods.