Temperature acceleration models in reliability predictions: Justification & improvements

Reliability predictions have been for a long time a difficult task, due to the conflict between high reliability requirements and the lack of component manufacturer data. As the data available during the development phase is the product bill of materials, reliability prediction methods have developed component reliability models based on in-service field return data and/or physics of failure. The repartition of these two approaches has changed over time, where predictions were mainly based on empirical data at the beginning (MIL-HDBK-217), but more recently attempts have been made to incorporate some form of physics of failure (MIL217+, FIDES). Note, that even in these attempts the acceleration factor coefficients are still based on empirical data.