Shot Line Geometric Description Method for Aircraft Vulnerability Calculation

Abstract This article, firstly, categorizes aircraft's presented area in a particular hit aspect into non-vulnerable region, non-overlapping vulnerable region and overlapping vulnerable region. Then, the aircraft's unique existing states are divided into kill states, intermediate states and no kill states. The parameters pertinent to aircraft's existing states in the above-mentioned regions are analyzed by using the shot line scanning method. Finally, the method provides two kinds of shot line geometric descriptive data: component's vulnerable area and presented area in each region, which can be used to calculate the component's single-hit vulnerability and aircraft's unique existing states and the areas corresponding to each state, which can be used to calculate the aircraft's single-hit and multi-hit vulnerability. Examples show that the proposed method can provide the parameters of the aircraft's or its component's area under threat being hit through tracing the shot line path thereby enabling the vulnerability calculated results to conform with reality to larger extent. In addition, the method solves the generality problem in dealing with overlapping components.