Experimental study of thermo-fluid boundary conditions, airflow and temperature distributions in a single aisle aircraft cabin mockup

Aircraft cabin mockup has been accepted as a benchmark tool to study the aircraft cabin environment. Some researchers used computational fluid dynamics to predict the cabin environment, but the model always needs to be validated by accurate and comprehensive experimental data obtained from the cabin mockup. This study measured thermo-fluid boundary conditions, airflow and temperature distributions by appropriate instruments in a full-scale seven-row aircraft cabin mockup. We used an improved interpolation method to obtain the airflow and temperature distributions. For airflow fields, the interpolation regions were determined based on the sampling location. For the temperature field, in addition to sampling locations, cabin wall temperatures were also needed to be set as interpolation boundary. Non-uniformity coefficient was applied to evaluate homogeneities of air supply velocities and zonal wall temperatures. The measurement error and uncertainty were quantified in detail to evaluate measurement accuracy. We found that the uncertainty of the air supply velocity measured by hot-sphere anemometers was lower than that of airflow field velocity measured by ultrasonic anemometers.

Automated summary

Aircraft cabin mockup is an important tool for studying the aircraft cabin environment. This study measured thermal-fluid conditions, airflow, and temperature distributions in a full-scale aircraft cabin mockup and evaluated the measurement accuracy and uncertainty, finding differences in measurement uncertainties between different instruments.