Realistic flight conditions on ground: new research facility for cabin ventilation

A new full-scale test bench was developed and set up at the German Aerospace Center in Göttingen to experimentally analyze novel ventilation approaches for aircraft under realistic thermodynamic boundary conditions. The new ground-based test rig represents a modern twin-aisle cabin layout characteristic for long-haul airliners. In addition to having a realistic cabin geometry, it also facilitates the experimental simulation of thermodynamic boundary conditions to study the performance of alternative ventilation concepts for different flight phases (e.g., climbing or cruising). The implemented fuselage elements as well as the floor are temperature controllable. Using this kind of mantle heating/cooling system allows dynamic changes of inner surface temperatures in a range covering the operationally relevant temperature and time scales. With this experimental set-up, a complete flight scenario (i.e., taxiing, climbing, cruising and descent) can be simulated thermodynamically. Thermal manikins were used during the studies to simulate the passenger’s heat impact experimentally. Latest measurement techniques comprising the acquisition of flow velocities, fluid temperatures as well as surface temperatures were used. Based on these data, integral quantities like the mean temperature stratification and mean velocity levels near the manikins, the heat removal efficiency as well as the predicted mean vote and the percentage of dissatisfied passengers were calculated to score the ventilation concepts in terms of passenger comfort for two different operational scenarios under steady boundary conditions.