Comfort evaluation of an aircraft cabin system employing a hybrid model

Abstract

Comfort is becoming one of the most important principles in the process of design and evaluation of civil aircraft cabins. However, the comprehensive quantitative evaluation of comfort in an aircraft cabin is a complicated issue because of the subjectivity of comfort perception and a large number of factors involved in the whole complex cabin system. A hybrid model combined with the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is proposed, which considers both the interrelation between the criteria and the fuzziness of subjective comfort perception concurrently. The result of the empirical study from the questionnaire survey in flight was consistent with that of the hybrid model. The proposed model is effective. It could provide a more reasonable priority to improve comfort in the aircraft cabin. According to the measured results of the cabin environment, the cabin facilities and layout, seats and service, the specific differences between the criteria can be displayed clearly, which is helpful to improve the cabin comfort level.