Zonal Safety and Particular Risk Analysis for Early Aircraft Design

Safety is paramount in aircraft design, and increasing aircraft complexity necessitates safety assessments early in design. For unconventional aircraft with novel propulsion or system technologies, it becomes even more critical to investigate safety as early as possible to avoid unfeasible configurations. In this context, the particular risk analysis (PRA) and the zonal safety analysis (ZSA) are essential to assess early, as they impact the aircraft configuration. These analyses require a three-dimensional (3D) aircraft model and substantial manual effort, limiting the ability to perform rapid iterations required to support design space exploration and multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). To analyze many aircraft configurations and system architectures, the 3D parametric model and the PRA and ZSA require automation. This paper reviews methodologies for performing the ZSA and PRA from a systems point of view and proposes parametric zone definition, identification of risk zones, and a conceptual-level analysis of the component placement strategy. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with an aft equipment bay of a business aircraft for varying geometrical granularity and system electrification. Overall, the presented method is a step toward integrating system safety analysis into MDO environments, thus increasing conceptual design maturity and reducing development time.