Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The worldwide aircraft industry is increasingly investing in cabin interiors research to develop new technologies to optimize passenger experience, so the Canadian aircraft industry must catch up. Due to the multiple customer requirements in both business and commercial aircraft, it is increasingly mandatory that aircraft interiors be available in flexible configurations. Integrators are seeking to modularize interiors, but this only serves to provide a partial solution. Aircraft manufacturers, such as Bombardier, are seeking to evaluate and commercialize new technologies that can help to provide increased customization, flexible manipulation, and comfort to passengers in business and commercial aircraft cabins. The objective of this research is to develop a design/analysis method and a prototype for aircraft cabin reconfiguration based on passenger comfort including seating, lighting, airflow and noise. This research program is a proposed collaboration between Ryerson, Queens, and UTIAS for a period of 2 years, consisting of three research pillars: design, analysis, and implementation. The design pillar is to come up with a design method to maximize passenger comfort. The analysis pillar is to provide a simulation tool to assess passenger comfort factors to guide cabin interior reconfiguration. The implementation pillar is to create a prototype for reconfiguration implementation to achieve passenger comfort enhancement. A number of key technologies including variable interior structure (VIS) and adaptive panel (VP), layout and topology optimization, lighting techniques, climate control, will be developed and demonstrated. A number of graduate students across Ryerson, Queen's and UTIAS will be trained to become new engineers and a large number of undergraduates will be trained through industrial internship to become new workforce in this field. Industrial interaction and collaboration through this project will help to create a niche for aircraft interior design and manufacturing business in Canada. This project will be one of the focal points for the Downsview Aerospace Hub currently under development.