Experimental study of the changes in thermal expectation during simulated flights in a civil aircraft cabin mockup

Aircraft cabin thermal environment is a key issue on flight selection by passengers, especially for long-haul flights. Currently, there have been some studies on the passengers’ thermal comfort in civil aircraft cabins. However, information is still limited on the changes in passenger thermal expectation with flight time. In this study, an aircraft cabin mockup was built, and three experiments involving human subjects were carried out in order to study the in-flight thermal environment in winter, summer and autumn, respectively. The cabin temperatures during the experiments were controlled according to the thermal neutral temperature model derived from our previous study on actual flights. The thermal neutral temperature model was checked by experimental results. The changes in thermal expectation were investigated based on physical measurement and questionnaire survey. In each experiment, the changes in the mean thermal sensation votes of passengers were less than 1, while the cabin temperature increased by 2.8°C, 1.8°C and 2°C from the beginning to the end during the three experiments, respectively. With the increase in the simulated flight time, passengers gradually expected a slightly higher cabin temperature. This trend would become very obvious when the simulated flight time was longer than 2 h.