Compound Linear Test Plan for 3-level Constant Stress Tests

Several accelerated life test plans use tests at only two levels of stress and thus, have practical limitations. They highly depend upon the assumption of a linear relationship between stress and time-to-failure and use only two extreme stresses that can cause irrelevant failure modes. Thus 3-level stress plans are preferable. When the lifetime distribution of test unit is exponential with mean lifetime $\theta_i$ at stress $x_i$, i=0, 1, 2, 3, we derive the optimum quadratic plan under the assumption that a quadratic relationship exists between stress and log(mean lifetime), and propose the compound linear plans, as an alternative to the optimum quadratic plan. The proposed compound linear plan is better than two other compromise plans for constant stress testing and nearly as good as the optimum quadratic plan, and has the advantage of simplicity.