Field study of neutrality cabin temperature for Chinese passenger in economy class of civil aircraft.

Cabin thermal comfort is an important factor for the competitiveness of civil aviation. It has become a hot topic in recent years. However, there are still no clear standards for the thermal comfort in the aircraft cabin. In this paper, the cabin thermal comfort of passengers in 30 flights was investigated. Both objective and subjective data were collected in order to obtain a neutrality cabin temperature, T. The investigation shows that the distribution of Thermal Sensation Votes (TSVs) was approximately symmetric around the "Neutral" vote. The clothing insulation value of passengers, I, was affected by the outdoor mean new effective temperature of departure city, ET*. T also changed with the outdoor ET*. According to this field surveys, a linear relationship is built between T and ET* as an adaptive model for the civil aircraft cabin. This adaptive model can be used as a reference to control the cabin operative temperature around the passengers. In this way, the cabin thermal comfort requirement may be satisfied for most of the passengers.