Conceptual design of a full-standing commercial aircraft seat
High-density passenger cabin concept has been pursued as one of the approaches to reduce the seat cost per flight, which subsequently lower the flight ticket prices. This trend towards a much denser passenger cabin designs has been observed since 1960s and it is recently further dr...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/85680/1/FK%202020%2068%20-%20ir.pdf |
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| Summary: | High-density passenger cabin concept has been pursued as one of the approaches to
reduce the seat cost per flight, which subsequently lower the flight ticket prices. This trend
towards a much denser passenger cabin designs has been observed since 1960s and it is recently
further driven by the introduction of low-cost airlines. Thus far, the accommodation of
additional passengers inside the same-size aircraft cabin space is often made possible by
reducing the seat’s pitch and width. However, this method has possibly reached its maximum
potential as many passengers have been complaining of discomforts due to the reduced legroom. Hence
to further increase the cabin density, new revolutionary designs of aircraft passenger seat
have been explored and among others, this leads to the proposed idea of standing passenger
cabin. Although this cabin concept idea has been around for a while, there is no standing passenger
cabin design that has been approved by aviation authorities for commercial transport aircraft
until now. This can be primarily contributed to the lack of approved designs for the standing
passenger seat to be applied in standing cabin implementation and ongoing concerns with safety
and comfort aspects of currently proposed standing passenger seat designs. Motivated by this
identified research gap, the main goal of this study is to conceptually develop a full-standing
passenger seat design that can provide adequate level of safety and comfort to the passengers.
The first step in designing and developing the full-standing passenger seat concept is to establish
the driving design requirements. This is accomplished through the standard data
collection methods like conducting public survey and interview of experts in the field. Based on
the findings, the proposed full-standing passenger seat design concept is developed using
standard engineering design process, which includes major steps like quality function
deployment, generation of alternative designs, selection of best design option and
anthropometric sizing of the seat. It should be noted that the public opinions and experts’
feedbacks are considered during this conceptual design process through online public survey and
interview sessions. After the proposed full-standing passenger design concept is selected and sized
according to anthropometry body data of Malaysians, its safety aspect is evaluated through finite
element analysis using the
ABAQUS software tool. Parametric study of the main structural part of the proposed full-standing passenger seat design is conducted with the objective of optimizing its
strength and weight characteristics while satisfying the certification requirements set by aviation
authorities. The considered design parameters are diameter and thickness of main
structural members of the proposed full-standing passenger seat design, and their material. Once
the optimized design has been established, it is analysed through the RULA and REBA
ergonomic assessment. RULA analysis is conducted with two ergonomics software tools: JACK
and DELMIA. In the meantime, REBA analysis is conducted based on the standard scoring worksheet.
These two ergonomic analyses are done to determine the adequacy level of the proposed
full-standing seat design in providing comfort to the passengers. The finalized proposed
conceptual design of the full-standing passenger seat is consulted again with the experts for their
opinions.
From the findings of the conducted public survey and expert interviews, a few design requirements
for the full-standing passenger seat have been identified. These include stability, strength,
comfortability, easy to use, aesthetic, safety, maintainability, ease of installation,
manufacturability, weight, cost and profitability. These requirements act as the reference basis in
the development process of the proposed conceptual full-standing passenger seat design. The
selected seat design concept is then modelled in CATIA with its initial sizing done based
on body anthropometry data of Malaysians. A design optimization process is conducted on the
proposed conceptual full-standing passenger seat design in order to optimize the strength
and weight characteristics of its main structures. The results from the design
optimization process have indicated that the optimum diameter and thickness for the main
structures of the seat design are 90 mm and 3 mm, respectively, with aluminium as the
structural material. At the optimum design setting, the structural weight of the full-standing
passenger seat is estimated to be about 9.5 kg and the maximum structural deflection under
prescribed certification loading is 28.42 mm. This weight is comparable with that of the current
conventional seat while the small maximum deflection implies an adequate structural
strength for safety provision to the passengers in compliance with the safety design requirements.
Furthermore, this optimized full-standing passenger seat design is also demonstrated to be
adequately comfortable to the passengers according to the obtained low health risk results from
the RULA and REBA ergonomic analyses. To close the loop for this research study, this
final proposed full-standing seat design is consulted again with the experts. In short, the
consulted experts have agreed that the proposed full-standing seat design fulfils their personal
technical design expectations and is suitable for use in the commercial transport aircraft based on
the presented analysis results, provided that it satisfies all other imposed requirements from the
related aviation authorities.
All in all, the work done in this study has highlighted the feasibility and the viability of the
revolutionary standing cabin concept for commercial transport aircraft, which provides the
much needed push for more research efforts towards the realization of its implementation.
Additionally, the proposed conceptual full-standing seat design has been tailored to provide
adequate level of safety and comfort to the passengers while in compliance with essential aviation
regulations. It can be applied as reference design in
the future development of passenger seat for standing cabin design. |
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