Distributions Used in Accelerated Testing

In this section, we will briefly present three lifetime distributions commonly used in accelerated life test analysis: the 1-parameter exponential, the 2-parameter Weibull and the lognormal distributions. Readers who are interested in a more rigorous overview (or in different forms of these and other life distributions) can refer to ReliaSoft's Life Data Analysis Reference.

Parameter Estimation
The parameter of the exponential distribution can be estimated graphically on probability plotting paper or analytically using either least squares or maximum likelihood. (Parameter estimation methods are presented in detail in Appendix B.)