Sensitivity analysis of design parameters of an anti-aircraft gun for hit probability enhancement

Abstract

To design an anti-aircraft gun with high hit-probability, the effect of each design parameter on the hit-probability needs to be estimated. For this purpose, the sensitivity analysis is widely used. However, the whole firing process of the anti-aircraft gun is too complicated to use the traditional sensitivity analysis that uses partial derivatives of the output function regarding the specific design parameter. The inaccuracy of the parts of the anti-aircraft gun that exists at different stage of the firing process will result in decrease of hit-probability. In this paper, the firing process of the anti-aircraft gun is described and each step of the firing process is formulated with the equation that includes the inaccuracies of parts. The anti-aircraft gun is modeled using the transformation matrix from design parameter to the traverse and the elevation angle considering inaccuracy of design parameters. Then by disturbing the each design parameter with random numbers whose average and standard deviation are known and calculating the resultant hit performance, the sensitivity of the design parameter on the hit probability can be estimated.