Conceptual design of vertical seat in commercial transport aircraft for static condition flight

• Main Author: Mohamad Nor, Ahmad Redzman
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/70507/1/FK%202016%2092%20-%20IR.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/70507/
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

The number of people travelling by air has increased from year to year. This situation can be attributed to the rise of low cost airlines, which offer cheaper flight tickets and make air travel affordable to more people. However, offering cheap flight tickets is also hard to maintain amid increasing competition and fluctuating market factors like fuel prices. It is believed that one way to keep the flight cost per passenger low is by increasing the cabin capacity. Several cabin arrangement and seat designs have been proposed to some level of success but the discomfort level of the passengers has also increased. To counter this problem, the "standing cabin" concept is proposed where passengers will be transported in their standing position instead of sitting inside the cabin. This way, the number of passengers that can be accommodated onboard the cabin per flight will be increased. In addition, because they are standing, the issue of small legroom space will not be a problem anymore. A central part of the standing cabin concept is the vertical seat to support passengers during flight. Thus far, there is no vertical seat that has been widely used in commercial transport flights due to several factors. Therefore, this research aims to propose a conceptual design of such vertical seat. Based on the market study and literature review, several design criteria of the vertical seat have been identified. They are used to select the baseline design to be developed further among three alternative concepts that have been designed. The chosen vertical seat design is then sized according to anthropometric data and prepared using Computer Aided Design software, CREO PARAMETRIC. Further sizing through parametric design study and also safety compliance analysis of its static structural strength to the governing aviation regulations are done using Finite Element Analysis software, ABAQUS. The structural strength of the resultant conceptual vertical seat design in this study has been shown to be in compliance with static condition flight specifications as outlined by aviation regulations. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the use of the proposed vertical seat in a full standing cabin setup leads to an increase of 21% in cabin capacity for a Boeing B737-300 aircraft. Further study on improving the proposed vertical seat design, especially in testing for its performance in dynamic condition flight, is recommended in future