A Study on the Flight Safety Analysis of Military Aircraft External Stores

Abstract

The external store fitted to the aircraft may affect the flight characteristics and flight safety of the aircraft, which requires the analyses and testing on it. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze types of failures that can affect the flight safety of aircraft due to the installation of external stores, and to check the flight safety of aircraft through dropping tests of the external stores. After identifying the types of failures that could affect the flight safety of the aircraft, the criticality was calculated to analyze the effect on the flight safety of the aircraft. Four types of failures were selected: unintentional dropping, failure of dropping, unintentional main wing deployment, and release of tail wing restraint of the external store, which are considered to affect the flight safety of the aircraft due to the operation of the external store. As a result of the aircraft's flight safety analysis on the failure types, the criticality requirements were met. Based on this, after obtaining the airworthiness certification, the drop test was successfully performed to confirm the flight safety of the aircraft by mounting an external store on the aircraft. However, in addition to the four hazards carried out in this study, the real external stores of the military aircraft may have various factors affecting the flight safety of the aircraft, so further research will be needed.