Design of an Attachment Scheme of a Vehicle to a Typical Fighter Aircraft

Design of an attachment scheme of a flight vehicle to a fighter aircraft is a critical task. Here, flight vehicle is a cylindrical body and it is attached to fighter aircraft with the help of a component called launch lug. Loads experienced by the flight vehicle in captive condition have been estimated by using aircraft parameters obtained during previous missions of similar kind of vehicles. This paper provides state of the art design consideration of the attachment scheme (launch lug and shell assembly) of the flight vehicle to the fighter aircraft. The structural integrity of the flight vehicle and its attachments scheme to the fighter aircraft has been verified at various aircraft manoeuvring conditions in its flight envelope through analysis. Design is verified using laboratory testing and in field trials. Finally this flight vehicle with the attachment scheme was used in flight trials.