Definition:
B10 Testing is a statistical endurance test method that determines the time or number of operations until 10% of a population of mechanical components have failed, providing reliability data used for functional safety calculations.
B10 testing is almost always done by or on behalf of the manufacturer of a component. This data can feed into the very central failure rate which then feeds into calculations.
Key Points:
- Important for calculating Safe Failure Fraction (SFF) for mechanical components.
- Supports verification of hardware fault tolerance (HFT) and proof test intervals in final elements like valves and actuators.
Example:
A pneumatic valve tested to a B10 life of 1,000,000 cycles means that after 1 million operations, 10% of the tested valves are expected to fail.
See Also: HFT, SFF, failure rate
Cited Source:
- IEC 61508-2:2010, Annex D.