Assessing the Variability of Acceleration Factors in the Load Matrix

In the automotive industry reliability engineering is an important issue. A possible answer to this problem is the Load Matrix which allows a systematical reliability analysis for the several components of the considered system. In this analysis so-called acceleration factors are computed (for each interesting component-failure-mode-combination) as the ratio of the accumulated damage under test conditions and the damage under usage conditions. The acceleration factors make it possible to derive information about the reliability under usage conditions. The aim of this diploma thesis was to investigate the possible variability of the acceleration factors. Since there were no information about the distribution of acceleration factors, the analysis was based on the non-parametric bootstrap method.