Why the Universal Catalogue of Acceleration Models is Elusive, and What to Do Instead
The reliability engineer is regularly asked the same question. Is there a catalogue of failure mechanisms and their acceleration models? The questioner is typically planning an accelerated life test, an ongoing reliability monitoring programme, or a regulatory submission, and would like to look up the relevant model and its parameters in a single authoritative source. The answer, after a century of reliability engineering practice, is that no such catalogue exists in a usable form. Existing resources, the OREDA and RAC databases, the IEEE Gold Book, the NPRD and NSWC compendia, the Rome Laboratory’s WARP project, and the Physics of Failure literature, provide partial coverage of either the models or the data, but not both, and not in combinations that allow plug-and-chug application to the practitioner’s specific situation. This paper sets out why the catalogue is elusive, what the existing resources actually offer, where the boundaries of legitimate use lie, and what the practitioner should do instead. The principles are drawn from a Speaking of Reliability conversation between Philip Sage and Fred Schenkelberg and have been translated here into a structured engineering doctrine in the TMG voice.