Internal component layout optimization method for aircraft safety design

Traditionally, aircraft vulnerability reductions are considered by fire or explosion prevention of fuel tank, redundant approach, and armor material design, et. al. This paper proposes a concept of internal component layout optimization to reduce the aircraft vulnerability, so as to achieve the low vulnerability by the natural location shielding or masking among components. In this optimization model, the location coordinates and orientations of the given components are used as the design variables, and the minimum equivalent vulnerability index is used as the design objective, considering the constrains of aircraft mass center, component working and non-overlapping conditions. The initial layouts are built by random method, in which, some bad solutions are replaced by knowledge solutions through vulnerability importance measure analysis. The component interference detection is conducted by the octree traversal and transformation operation method. The low vulnerability layout optimization problem is solved by a hybrid self-adaptive sequential quadratic program and genetic algorism. The proposed low vulnerability layout optimization concept may be regarded as a supplement to commonly used vulnerability reduction methods, and is useful for enhancing aircraft safety.