Burn-in

This testing process will force certain failures to occur under supervised conditions so an understanding of load capacity of the product can be established.

Theoretically, any weak components would fail during the "Burn In" time allowing those parts to be replaced.

To determine the failure time distribution for a very low percentage of the production, one would have to destroy a very large number of devices.

Because of this, a process that initially uses burn-in may eventually phase it out as the various root causes for failures are identified and eliminated.

There is another use of the term by some audiophiles, who leave new audio equipment turned on for multiple days or weeks, to get the components to achieve optimal performance.