The invasion of personal space is often a contributory factor to the experience of discomfort in aircraft passengers. This paper presents a questionnaire study which investigated how air travellers are affected by invasions of personal space and how they attempt to adapt to, or counter, these invasions. In support of recent findings on the factors influencing air passenger comfort, the results of this study indicate that the invasion of personal space is not only caused by physical factors (e.g. physical contact with humans or objects), but also other sensory factors such as noise, smells or unwanted eye contact. The findings of this study have implications for the design of shared spaces. Practitioner Summary: This paper presents a questionnaire study which investigated personal space in an aircraft environment. The results highlight the factors which affect the perception of personal space invasion in aircraft and can therefore inform the design of aircraft cabin environments to enhance the passenger experience.
BACKGROUND: Comfort is an important factor in the acceptance of transport systems. In 2010 and 2011, the European Commission (EC) put forward its vision for air travel in the year 2050 which envisaged the use of in--flight virtual reality. This paper addressed the EC vision by investigating the effect of virtual environments on comfort. Research has shown that virtual environments can provide entertaining experiences and can be effective distractors from painful experiences. OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent to which a virtual environment could distract people from sources of discomfort. METHODS: Experiments which involved inducing discomfort commonly experienced in--flight (e.g. limited space, noise) in order to determine the extent to which viewing a virtual environment could distract people from discomfort. RESULTS: Virtual environments can fully or partially distract people from sources of discomfort, becoming more effective when they are interesting. They are also more effective at distracting people from discomfort caused by restricted space than noise disturbances. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual environments have the potential to enhance passenger comfort by providing positive distractions from sources of discomfort. Further research is required to understand more fully the reasons why the effect was stronger for one source of discomfort than the other.
Experimentally determined air leakage data are interpreted using fluid flow theory, finite element deflections and initial gap measurements. It is shown that laminar flow equations do not apply at practical aero-engine pressures and that the leakage flow can be overestimated by assuming choked isentropic flow at the outside diameter of the joint. Design against leakage is thereby reduced to a structural consideration of gap height at the outside diameter. It is shown that the gap height will usually reduce with load. A ‘divergent’ initial gap is shown to cause excessive leakage. However, the machining of a very small cone angle on the contact face is shown to be an effective method of significantly reducing leakage.
This paper describes a method of finding the size and shape of the gaps which exist between the faces of an assembled but unloaded fiat-faced, metal-to-metal flange joint. The low-pressure leakage of 26 such assemblies has been measured experimentally, and pressure tappings have been used to record the pressure distribution under the contact faces of some of the flanges. Formulae are derived for the conversion from experimental data to gap size and shape. The method gives a very sensitive measure of gap height because of the cubic nature of the conversion formulae. Gap heights in the range 4–30 μm have been found. It is shown by finite element calculations that deflections due to boll loading of a perfectly flat flange are much smaller than the observed initial gaps.
Four bolts of a lightweight, steel, flanged joint were strain-gauged to measure bolt tension and bending. Three-dimensional, finite element analysis was used to determine bolt strains and gaps between the flanges due to axial tension and internal pressure for three different contact conditions. Two joints were tested. The front faces of the first joint were nominally flat while the second had a small negative cone angle (⋍ 0 degrees 15 minutes) so that flanges initially touched at the outside only. The non-linearity of experimental bolt strain with external load shows that the contact area around the bolts decreases with increasing axial tension. Comparison with the finite element predictions shows the rate at which the contact area diminishes. The finite element results also demonstrate that flange deflection is underestimated when contact area loss is ignored, and the consequences for leakage prediction are explained.
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