Abstract: In airport engineering, an arresting system is an important safety guard for an aircraft in case it slips out of the runway. It is particularly desirable to evaluate the validity and reliability of the arresting system to ensure the safety of aircraft. In this paper, carrier-based aircraft arresting cable is the main research subject. The arresting system is divided into three parts with specific functions in the process of arresting an aircraft: blocking function, buffering function, and guiding function. Quantitative indexes are established for the three functions, and mathematical function analysis method is used to determine the quantitative values of different indexes. Using the weight, the corresponding index evaluation values are obtained. Finally, using the triangle graph theory, the trend of the arresting system functions is analyzed to determine evaluation results to comprehensively evaluate the system. Taking an arresting system in an airport as an example, data is collected and evaluated during an arresting process. The results show that using the method for model evaluation function established in this paper, the evaluation values of various functions of the arresting system in a specific arresting process can be obtained. The values for blocking function, nonbuffering function, and nonguiding function are 0.83, 0.46, and 0.64 respectively, and can be used to judge the change trend of validity and reliability of the arresting system. The research results can provide reference for functions of the arresting system evaluation.

Key words: air transportation, function evaluation, system evaluation, arresting system structure, quantitative function