Advanced aircraft seat design : designing features for improving comfort and ergonomy

This design project examines scientific, creative and innovative means to improve passenger comfort in commercial airplane tourist-class seats during long haul flights. These means have been studied, designed, manufactured and tested consistent with the current size, space and safety constraints. The project involved three phases. In the first phase, the human factors research area, which includes ergonomics, human physiology and anthropometry, was studied. Moreover, passenger survey and quality function deployment were implemented. For the second phase of the design project a second passenger survey and a product design matrix were used for determining the design concepts that later were manufactured and evaluated. Finally, the features of the two design concepts that improve the ergonomy and the comfort of the seat, and their construction and evaluation have been presented analytically. The test observations showed that the use of an adjustable lumbar support with an adjustable winged headrest could increase the comfort of the aircraft seat, while the use of a height adjustable tray can significantly increase the ergonomy of the seat.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Bekiaris, Nikolaos, 1970-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charlie Boppe and David Burke.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50082

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/50082