[en] Quality Assurance for space systems is a major issue for satellite manufacturer as once in orbit no maintenance can be performed on the satellites. Quality assurance implements radiation hardness assurance tests to qualify electronics devices to be used within the space environment and insure their reliability for a given environment. The radiation belts around the Earth are a threat for electronics systems as trapped particles can ionize matter and lead to an energy deposition within the integrated circuits. This environment is characterized by a low dose-rate, i.e. the energy deposition occurs slowly. Radiation hardness assurance is performed in laboratories at ground level with accelerated tests intended to obtain the behaviour of devices when submitted to ionizing radiation.These tests are performed in order to evaluate the degradation of the electrical parameters of circuits and the qualify lots. In this article an accelerated test technique of the low dose-rate behaviour of bipolar integrated circuit (IC) is presented.This technique is based on a physical model of mechanisms occurring within the oxide of the passivation layers of the circuit.This model allows to reproduce and explain a large set of experimental observations done during low dose-rate testing of bipolar ICs. In this article, radiation effects on biased bipolar microcircuits during switching experiments are investigated. Electrical parameters degradation is shown to be dependent on bias conditions and on dose-rate. Accelerated estimation of the degradation of the microcircuit is shown to be possible, and obtained results are conservative. (authors)