The inferences of data obtained from periodic inspection and type I censoring for the three step stress accelerated life test are studied in this paper. The failure rate function that a log-quadratic relation of stress and the tampered failure rate model are considered under the exponential distribution. The optimal stress change times which minimize the asymptotic variance of maximum likelihood estimators of parameters is determined and the maximum likelihood estimators of the model parameters are estimated. A numerical example will be given to illustrate the proposed inferential procedures.