Method for assessing combat survivability for aircraft with wing damage

Abstract

In the combat environment, wing damage is of particular concern since the wing is the main component to generate lift which affects survivability or safety. Previous research has been mainly concentrated on the aerodynamic behavior of the aircraft with wing damage. However, the military analysts are more concerned about the specific value of survivability (measured by survival probability) so as to correctly plan combat operations. This paper proposes a method for quantitatively describing the relationship of aircraft survivability and damage holes with different sizes and different locations on the wing. Examples show that the survivability decreases with increasing hole size; the magnitude of survivability decrement reduces when moving the damage backwards or moving the damage toward the wing tip; when the effect of damage on the vulnerability is considered for different hole sizes, the survivability is reduced more significantly compared with the cases where the vulnerability is kept constant for all scenarios.