Development cost prediction of general aviation aircraft projects with parametric modeling

The study of the development cost of general aviation aircraft is limited by small samples with many cost-driven factors. This paper investigates a parametric modeling method for prediction of the development cost of general aviation aircraft. The proposed technique depends on some principal components, acquired by utilizing P value analysis and gray correlation analysis. According to these principal components, the corresponding linear regression and BP neural network models are established respectively. The feasibility and accuracy of the P value analysis are verified by comparing results of model fitting and prediction. A sensitivity analysis related to model precision and suitability is discussed in detail. Results obtained in this study show that the proposed method not only has a certain degree of versatility, but also provides a preliminary prediction of the development cost of general aviation aircraft.