Kill probability contour analysis method for assessing aircraft single hit vulnerability

Aircraft single threat hit vulnerability is usually expressed as the kill probability or vulnerable area. This method seems to evaluate the aircraft or component vulnerability from the general point of view. However, the specific location vulnerability of an aircraft cannot be intuitively assessed. This paper provides a method for drawing the kill probability contour for evaluating the single hit vulnerability. In this method, the aircraft finite element model is used as the input, then the kill probability of hit of a certain position by a shot line is calculated in which component kill modes such as penetration, combustion, burst and combination of them are considered, and the aircraft kill probability contour can be finally obtained. Analysis shows that, the kill probability contour may provide the distribution of aircraft kill probability, and may be regarded as the supplementary to the vulnerable area method. This method is useful to provide valuable advice on aircraft survivability enhancement or vulnerability reduction design.