Solving Seat Cooling Challenges in Luxury Aircraft Interiors
Luxury aircraft seats offer exceptional comfort, but keeping passengers cool presents new challenges.
While seat cooling technology exists in luxury cars, it’s less common in aircraft due to complex engineering and certification hurdles.
Summary of the challenge – what the problem is.
The seats inside luxury aircraft interiors have many features that make the flying experience more pleasurable for the passenger. These features include plush upholstery, armrests, leg rests, headrests, and a range of adjustments so that the most comfortable in-flight resting position can be attained—all controlled via buttons linked to powered actuators. These innovations have been in place and honed over many years as airlines iterate and improve their seats.
Another way to keep passengers happy is to keep their bodies cool by allowing them to control the temperature to their liking. This means they stay feeling invigorated and avoid the stifled feeling that being on a long-haul flight can give. Technology exists to cool the seat itself rather than just to blow air onto the passenger. It is seen in luxury cars, so why is it less prevalent in the aircraft interiors industry?
Why it’s a problem?
The solution for achieving a ‘cooled’ seat does not normally involve any form of refrigeration; instead, it provides cooling by drawing air past the passenger and through the seat cushions.
To achieve this, it relies on:
- Perforated seat cushions that allow for the air to move through the foam/fabric.
- A fan to draw the air from around the seat.
- A ducting system to provide a path for exhaust air.
- An electronic control box (on/off, fan speed, etc).
This poses an additional certification challenge; Aircraft seats must be tested to prove that the load transmitted through the seat to the passenger’s lumbar spine in the event of a crash or hard landing is below a certain level.
This is already a challenging requirement for seating manufacturers, and they will likely use data and analysis from existing seat structures and foam types for cushions that have produced good results in the past.
The additional variables resulting from the inclusion of the seat cooling system inevitably result in changes to the load path. Altering the cushion makeup and adding components that interact with the seat pan, another critical structural component determining the lumbar spine loads, add up to an increased risk for test failures, additional engineering effort, and additional cost/delays to project timelines.
So, what’s the solution to this problem?
All of the above must be carefully managed and require skilled engineers with experience in dynamic analysis that can be reliably correlated to test results.
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