A system that generates test patterns for detecting transition faults in an integrated circuit (IC). During operation, the system receives slack times for each net in the IC. Note that a slack time for a net is the minimum amount of delay that the given net can tolerate before violating a timing constraint. For each possible transition fault in the IC, the system uses the slack times for nets in the IC to generate a test pattern which exposes the transition fault by producing a transition that propagates along the longest path to the transition fault.