Burn In
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Burn-in is the process by which components of a system are exercised before being placed in service (and often, before the system being completely assembled from those components). This testing process will force certain failures to occur under supervised conditions so an understanding of load capacity of the product can be established. The intention is to detect those particular components that would fail as a result of the initial, high-failure rate portion of the
bathtub curve The bathtub curve is a particular shape of a failure rate graph. This graph is used in reliability engineering and deterioration modeling. The 'bathtub' refers to the shape of a line that curves up at both ends, similar in shape to a bathtub. Th ...
of component
reliability Reliability, reliable, or unreliable may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Computing * Data reliability (disambiguation), a property of some disk arrays in computer storage * Reliability (computer networking), a category used to des ...
. If the burn-in period is made sufficiently long (and, perhaps, artificially stressful), the system can then be trusted to be mostly free of further early failures once the burn-in process is complete. Theoretically, any weak components would fail during the "Burn In" time allowing those parts to be replaced. Replacing the weak components would prevent premature failure, infant mortality failure, or other latent defects. When the equivalent lifetime of the stress is extended into the increasing part of the bathtub-like failure-rate curve, the effect of the burn-in is a reduction of
product lifetime Product lifetime or product lifespan is the time interval from when a product is sold to when it is discarded. Product lifetime is slightly different from service life because the latter considers only the effective time the product is used. It ...
. In a mature production it is not easy to determine whether there is a decreasing failure rate. To determine the failure time distribution for a very low percentage of the production, one would have to destroy a very large number of devices. By stressing all devices for a certain burn-in time the devices with the highest failure rate fail first and can be taken out of the cohort. Thus by applying a burn-in, early in-use system failures can be avoided at the expense (tradeoff) of a reduced yield caused by the burn-in process. When possible, it is better to eliminate the root cause of early failures than doing a burn-in. Because of this, a process that initially uses burn-in may eventually phase it out as the various root causes for failures are identified and eliminated. For
electronic component An electronic component is any basic discrete electronic device or physical entity part of an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singula ...
s, burn-in is frequently conducted at elevated
temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...
and perhaps elevated
voltage Voltage, also known as (electrical) potential difference, electric pressure, or electric tension, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a Electrostatics, static electric field, it corresponds to the Work (electrical), ...
. This process may also be called heat soaking. The components may be under continuous test or simply tested at the end of the burn-in period. There is another use of the term by some
audiophile An audiophile (from + ) is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. The audiophile seeks to achieve high sound quality in the audio reproduction of recorded music, typically in a quiet listening space in a room with ...
s, who leave new audio equipment turned on for multiple days or weeks, to get the components to achieve optimal performance. However, many debates have arisen about the benefits of this practice.


See also

* Burn-in oven *
Failure rate Failure is the social concept of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and is usually viewed as the opposite of success. The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. On ...
*
Reliability theory Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability is defined as the probability that a product, system, or service will perform its intended funct ...
*
Survival analysis Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. This topic is called reliability theory, reliability analysis ...
* Dielectric withstand test *
Shakedown (testing) A shakedown is a period of testing or a trial journey undergone by a ship, aircraft or other craft and its crew before being declared operational. Statistically, a proportion of the components will fail after a relatively short period of use, an ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burn-In Environmental testing Hardware testing