The purpose of this paper is to investigate the passenger comfort changes due to the wake turbulence impact from the formation flight (FF) leading aircraft, which can be a showstopper for the real application of FF to airliners.
Taking advantage of the overall aircraft design and optimization framework, as well as the module for FF assessment, the comfort level has been quantified for aircraft in solo flight and in FF according to ISO 2631–1 specifications concerning vibration total value.
The results showed that atmospheric turbulence intensity is the dominant factor in determining the passenger ride quality in comparison to the impact of formation wake flow. According to the preliminary results of this study, passengers seated away from the aircraft mass center encounter larger discomfort. In comparison to mass center, seats away from mass center also experience slightly stronger discomfort due to FF. The current simulation results show that FF is feasible without remarkably degrading passenger comfort level, which agrees well with the flight test results.
As passenger comfort is crucial for civil transport application of FF, the study carried out within this manuscript can give a preliminary indication to the showstopper of FF real-world application.
The proposed strategy can provide quantitative values for judging the possible drawbacks of FF, i.e. passenger comfort issues as mentioned in the literature. On the other hand, the aircraft level study based on reliable data and methods can give important insight for this interesting topic and further help the real-world application of FF for commercial aircraft. In addition, it can serve as preliminary studies for further design and operation modifications for aircraft in FF.
Study on the vibrational comfort of aircraft in formation flight
Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology ; 92 , 8 ; 1307-1316
2020-07-23
1 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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