Comparison of Surface Temperatures and Cooling Rates for Different Ventilation Concepts in an A320 Aircraft Cabin under Flight Conditions

Abstract

Cabin displacement ventilation (CDV), mixing ventilation (MV) and hybrid ventilation (HV) were investigated in an Airbus A320 under flight conditions. Static and transient temperature settings were studied with a flight test installation, which comprises more than 200 temperature and velocity probes as well as a step motor driven infrared camera. For all ventilation systems, homogenous temperature distributions among the different passenger seats were observed. While CDV reveals the highest heat removal efficiency under static conditions and MV the lowest, the latter together with HV provides the fastest surface temperature reaction times in the transient scenarios. As expected, MV provides the largest flow velocities and fluctuations in the passenger zone, whereas CDV and HV perform similar and confirm the expectations of low draft risk. Another potential advantage of CDV and HV is given by the surface temperatures, which deviate less from the cabin air temperature at HV and CDV as compared to MV.