Lifetime technology refer to methods to study stability and lifetime of materails and products.

The function of a product may be limited by the service conditions, e.g a load causing unacceptable stress/strain to develop in the material or an aggressive environment causing degradation and deteroriation of the material.

One approach is to predict the servcie Life (function) from accelerated ageing under sutaible condtions that will mimic the real environments. This may include the design of accelerated ageing program, performing oven ageing and characterisation of material properties.

All aspects need to be considered to ensure a product will fulfill its function for a specified time period.

A good starting point is to perform a Life Time Analysis (LTA) in which the function of a product is analysed with reference to the indivudal components and materials. The potential environment they are exposed to including tempeature, load, water, oxygen or other reactive liquids/gases is ranked and the most critical materials/Components with reference to function are identified.