environmental testing
Testing a device in the heat, cold, damp and condensation it will live in.
Environmental testing reproduces a device's operating conditions, typically by cycling temperature and humidity in a climate chamber, and checks function and accuracy against a reference throughout.
Examples
The bench node is cycled from 5 °C to 45 °C at 90 % relative humidity for 24 h, and must read within ±0.5 °C of a reference probe.
Cooling at night makes damp air condense on the board, so cycling finds a humidity sensor stuck at 100 % that a fixed extreme misses.