Assessing survivability for damaged aircraft in the combat environment

Abstract

Recently, much effort has been devoted to the study of aerodynamic performance analysis for the damaged aircraft. Sometimes, we are more concerned about the specific value of survivability of damaged aircraft, which allows the analysts to plan combat operations. How to relate aerodynamic performance degradation to survivability when the aircraft is damaged is important for military operation research. In this study, the maximum level flight velocity and one-on-one encounter model serve as the bridge combining aerodynamic computation and survivability analysis together, and an integrated survivability model of damaged aircraft is proposed. Two examples are provided to illustrate how the damaged wing affects the survivability of an aircraft. The proposed method is an attempt for quantitatively describing the relationship of aircraft survivability with the battle-induced damages affected by attach angel, flight altitudes, etc.