Vulnerability Assessment for Fire and Explosion Suppression Measures of Aircraft Fuel System

Fuel system is the most vulnerable system on fixed wing aircraft. When penetrated by threat propagators, it is liable to be damaged by combustion and explosion. Thus, fire/explosion suppression for fuel system are important measures to improve the aircrafts survivability. In this paper, the whole aircraft vulnerability model which consists of aircraft configuration, structure, and systems is constructed by CATIA software, the basic steps for vulnerability quantitative computation are descried, and the computing formulas of three kill modes are presented. The vulnerability of one aircraft before and after adopting fire/explosion suppression measures are analyzed. The results show that fire/explosion suppression measures can effectively decrease the aircrafts vulnerable area and kill probability.