Simulator Study on Ride Comfort of Flexible Aircraft

Increasing structural flexibility of modern aircraft, driven by advances in lightweight materials and high-aspect-ratio wing designs, has introduced new challenges for passenger and ride comfort. High-frequency oscillations of flexible modes can degrade the passenger comfort and well-being. The joint Project RiCoFlex (Ride Comfort of Flexible Aircraft) of DLR and Embraer has the goal to identify the impact of aeroelastic flexibility on passenger comfort and to develop assessment criteria, which also provide a basis for the design of control laws to improve passenger comfort of flexible aircraft. A large simulator study in the passenger cabin of the DLR full-motion simulator AVES was conducted to address this topic. The present paper describes the setup up of the simulator campaign including the development of relevant test cases and the applied questionnaires. The passenger ratings showed different dependencies for frequency variations in the lateral and vertical axis and a parallel shift of the frequency-dependent trends with increasing amplitude of the oscillations.