Effects of Propulsion System Operation on Military Aircraft Survivability

Abstract

The recent advances in Infra-Red (IR) weapon technology have dramatically altered the rules of air combat leading to a consistent departure from 'traditional' Energy-Maneuverability philosophy in aircraft design, prioritizing stealth and sophisticated armament instead. In this modern aerial warfare environment, it is obvious that new techniques need to be applied to properly assess aircraft survivability and produce successful designs for aircraft propulsion systems. The present study focuses on the development of such a methodology, which contrary to related work in the field includes considerations for both aircraft IR signature and missile/aircraft kinematic performance. An aircraft IR signature model is constructed using a collection of methods for area & temperature estimation and exhaust plume modelling; the latter is combined with missile-vs-aircraft and aircraft-vsaircraft simulations to quantify aircraft survivability in the form of missile & aircraft lethal zones. The proposed methodology is applied to a study on propulsion system effects on aircraft survivability, in which a comparison between different engine configurations is performed: In the scenarios examined, IR signature at cruise conditions and maximum-power thrust performance are identified as key parameters for aircraft combat performance. Nomenclature (Nomenclature entries should have the units identified) A = Area AB = Afterburner

Muharip hava araçlarının hava - yer angajman analiz modelinin geliştirilmesi

“…[5]'te, savaş anında oluşabilecek hasarlara karşı sabit kanatlı hava aracının hayatta kalabilirlik analizi yapılmıştır. [6]'da hava aracının bıraktığı kızılötesi (Infrared (IR)) izin hayatta kalabilirliğe etkisi ve IR iz düzeyi yönetimi incelenmiştir. [7]'de hava aracı manevrası ve karşı tedbirlerin hayatta kalabilirliğe etkisi analiz edilmiştir.…”

Numerical evaluation of the exhaust-direction effects on plume flow and helicopter infrared radiation under hover and cruise statuses

“…The advanced infrared (IR) detection and tracking technology lead to a more and more serious threat to the survivability of aircraft (Antonakis et al , 2019). To improve the survivability of aircraft against the IR-guided weapons, vast efforts have been devoted to the infrared radiation suppression technology during the past decades, including the low-emission exhaust nozzle (An et al , 2016; Cheng et al , 2019), the efficient cooling and optical blocking of internal hot components (Baranwal and Mahulikar, 2019), the mixing enhancement of hot plume with surrounding cold air (Shan and Zhang, 2009; Paszko, 2017) and the use of low-emissivity coating and functional structure (Mahulikar et al , 2006; Andersson, 2017), etc.…”