Thermal comfort assessment in civil aircraft cabins

Aircraft passengers are more and demanding in terms of thermal comfort. But it is not yet easy for aircraft crew to control the environment control system (ECS) that satisfies the thermal comfort for most passengers due to a number of causes. This paper adopts a corrected predicted mean vote (PMV) model and an adaptive model to assess the thermal comfort conditions for 31 investigated flights and draws the conclusion that there does exist an uncomfortable thermal phenomenon in civil aircraft cabins, especially in some short-haul continental flights. It is necessary to develop an easy way to predict the thermal sensation of passengers and to direct the crew to control ECS. Due to the assessment consistency of the corrected PMV model and the adaptive model, the adaptive model of thermal neutrality temperature can be used as a method to predict the cabin optimal operative temperature. Because only the mean outdoor effective temperature ET∗ of a departure city is an input variable for the adaptive model, this method can be easily understood and implemented by the crew and can satisfy 80–90% of the thermal acceptability levels of passengers.