Correlation between the failure behavior of automotive components under taxi and field operating conditions

This paper investigates the correlation of the failure behavior between components under different operating conditions, which allows the forecast of the failure behavior of the less stressed component. The authors present the reliability evaluation of a large amount of real, current and practical failure data of an automotive component under two different operating conditions-taxis and field application-and determine the correlation. One result is that the correlation factor depends on the evaluation method. They present the results for the Sudden Death and Candidate methods. In both cases, the lifetime of taxis is smaller than that of regular field application. Neglecting the knowledge of the drive-performance distribution yields identical values for the shape parameter for both operating conditions, a validation for the identical kind of failure in both cases. The correlation factor is amazingly high. However, the Candidate method yields to different shape parameters. This means the correlation cannot be described by a single factor. But, the trend of acceleration could be confirmed. One can draw the following conclusion: there is an amazingly high acceleration of the taxi failure behavior compared to the field. However, one should be careful and cautious with quantitative predicates.