Petri Net based safety evaluation approach for aircraft under the threats of traditional weapons

Traditionally, the vulnerability calculation of aircraft subjected to traditional weapon hits by nonexplosive penetrators or missile fragments include two categories. One is exact solution methods (Markov Chain, Tree Diagram) which usually generate large matrix leading to combinatorial explosion problem when aircraft has large amount of redundant components. The other is approximate solution methods (Monte Carlo, Simplified approach) which cost relatively less CPU runtime but have poor accuracy. As Petri nets are frequently used to model and analyze a large variety of systems, we propose a new method using Petri Net to evaluate the aircraft vulnerability or safety. Two examples are discussed by Markov Chain method and the proposed approach. Results of comparisons show that the Petri Net based aircraft vulnerability or safety assessment method is capable to analyze aircraft single or multiple hit vulnerability, and has the potential advantages in analyzing complicated system with large state space.