Modeling aircraft for vulnerability assessment based on finite elements method

An approach for constructing the models for aircraft vulnerability assessment was proposed based on finite elements method. The provided models include aircraft configuration model and component model. The aircraft configuration model is used to provide the geometric perimeters and material composition of aircraft outer skin. The component model is used to provide the internal component geometric perimeters, material composition, kill modes, criticality flag, and the logic expression of component kill with aircraft kill. Analysis shows that the proposed modeling method has the following advantages, (1) the aircraft or component geometry is approximated by finite element patches, which may well reflect the reality, (2) the liquid model is considered, (3) critical and noncritical component are modeled separately, so as to reduce the human errors, and (4) it has good interface with the commonly used finite element modeling software, which may reduce the repetitive work.