Method of calculating the probability of a safe landing for ship-based aircraft

IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. 2022. Vol. 58. No. 6. P. 5425–5442.

Semakov S., Semakov I.

We propose the method for calculating the probability of a safe landing for ship-based aircraft. We define a safe landing as the event that the initial touch of the landing surface by an aircraft occurs on a given segment of the deck, and at the time of this contact, the phase coordinates of the aircraft (elevation angle, banking angle, vertical velocity, and so on) are within the specified limits. We propose a formula for estimating the desired probability and a formula for determining the maximum possible error ΔP of this estimate: If P is an unknown exact value of the desired probability and P^ is an approximate calculated value, then |P−P^|≤ΔP. We implement the method on the example of the automatic landing of the real aircraft on the real aircraft carrier. Random perturbations are caused by an atmospheric turbulence and ship’s motions. We present and discuss the calculation results. These results show that the error ΔP is negligible, so that the proposed formula for P^ determines the desired probability P almost exactly.

Keywords: aircraft, random process, probability, safe landing