Discomfort estimation for vertical whole-body vibration in the aircraft cabin considering the duration and static sitting comfort

Abstract

This paper investigated the discomfort caused by vertical whole-body vibration (WBV) over 20 minutes using data recorded at the front, middle, and rear seats of the passenger cabin in civil aviation during a cruising flight. Twenty-four subjects experienced each stimulus at 0.5 ms⁻² r.m.s. and judged discomfort at various moments (i.e. 1/6, 5, 10, 15, and 20 min) using a category-ratio method. The difference in discomfort due to high-frequency vibration components vanished after 10 min. Based on Stevens’ power law, a method is developed to estimate long-term vertical WBV discomfort by considering the static discomfort and an interaction coefficient between vibration and static discomfort as parameters. The proposed estimation method showed high accuracy with determination coefficients (R²) higher than 0.97 and good linearity with values of growth rates 0.95, 1, and 0.95 for the vertical WBV discomfort at the front, middle, and rear seat positions in the aircraft cabin.

Practitioner summary: An estimation method for the discomfort caused by vertical WBV considering the duration and static sitting discomfort is developed. This method can provide accurate discomfort estimating for long-term vibration exposure, e.g. in civil aviation during a cruising flight, by introducing an ‘interaction term’ between static and dynamic discomfort.

Keywords:

• Vibration discomfort
• whole-body vibration
• long-term duration
• static discomfort
• aircraft cabin

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

The Biological Experimentation Safety and Ethics Committee of the Bio-X Research Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University approved the experiment.

Authors’ contributions

Yu Huang designed the experiment and written the manuscript. Jingdong Li performed the data collection and analysis, and finished the draft of manuscript.

Data availability statement

All data and materials are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52072242), Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, China (19ZR1424500), and a Ministry Key Project (GW0890006).