Making Light Work: Accelerating Reliability with HALT and FMVT
04 Nov 2025
Why Accelerated Stress Testing Matters
The safety and reliability of products is essential: they must perform flawlessly under real-world conditions, and traditional testing often takes a long time. That’s where Accelerated Stress Testing (AST) comes in. AST helps uncover weaknesses early by applying stresses beyond normal use, enabling faster development cycles and improved product quality.
Learning from Thomas Edison
If you are familiar with Thomas Edison’s quest for improving the light bulb, then you are likely to resonate with the notion of success through failure. He is reported to have said, “I have not failed 10,000 times; I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” While the exact quote may have been lost to time, the sentiment remains the same. Edison did not view his time and efforts as a waste. To him, testing and iteration were the name of the game.
When designing components, systems, or solutions where reliability, cost, or safety is critical, reason, care, creativity, and intuition are important levers to pull. Edison embodied the iterative approach to design: testing and retesting, tweaking, and testing again. Sometimes when faced with a challenge, using reason, iteration, and powerful tools will get to the solution fastest.
HALT and FMVT: The Power Tools of Reliability
Powerful tools such as Failure Mode Verification Testing (FMVT) and Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) are important in the development phase of a product. They help accelerate reasoning and bring successful products to market.
Utilizing FMVT and HALT methodologies attracts valuable insights regarding a sample's robustness and reliability. Both FMVT and HALT are reasoned methodologies for AST.
- HALT : Identifies design weaknesses by pushing products beyond their normal operating limits to expose failure points.
- FMVT: Focuses on verifying known failure modes under accelerated conditions to validate robustness. It also helps identify possible unknown failure modes.
Benefits of AST with HALT and FMVT
- Reduced time to market
- Lower warranty and support costs
- Improved product reliability and safety
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
- Valuable insights for design improvements
Industries Leveraging AST
Accelerated Stress Testing is widely used in industries such as:
Conclusion
Like Edison, success comes through testing, but with modern tools like HALT and FMVT, we can find weaknesses in days, not years. Accelerated Stress Testing empowers teams to innovate faster and deliver more reliable products. Contact us to learn more about how AST can benefit your development process.
You may be interested in...
Accelerated Reliability Testing
Accelerated Reliability Testing helps you uncover design defects or weaknesses that may not have been realized during product design.
Failure Mode Verification Testing (FMVT®)
Failure Mode Verification Testing (FMVT®) is a patented process to employ highly accelerated test methods revealing inherent design weaknesses first predicted by the FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) process.
Accelerated Stress Testing (AST)
Intertek offers Accelerated Stress Testing (AST) simulating “real-life” conditions to provide evaluation data that helps ensure a product’s life and reliability.