1 On the Optimal Design of Step-Stress Partially Accelerated Life Tests for the Gompertz Distribution with Type-I Censoring

This paper studies simple time-step stress Partially Accelerated Life Tests (PALT). It is assumed that the lifetimes of test units follow a two-parameter Gompertz distribution and are type-I censored. Maximum Likelihood Estimates of model parameters are obtained. Estimates of the variances of the estimators are also presented. In addition, optimum test plans for simple time-step stress test are developed. Finally, for illustration, numerical examples are provided