The National Research Council Canada (NRC) is working to build a cabin simulator in Ottawa over the next two years, it says.
The new facility will provide airframers, OEMs, suppliers of interior aircraft parts and other aerospace companies with the chance to test out several cabin layouts and environmental controls before committing to a formal qualification or certification process for new cabins.
The council expects the facility, now known as the Cabin Comfort and Environmental Research Centre, to be completed in 2015.
The NRC has budgeted Canadian dollar (C$) 4.25 million ($4.18 million) to develop the new demonstrator facility, which will house the simulator. This includes $1.4 million to renovate the facility as well as investments in infrastructure and installation of the mock-up. The funds would be released pending approval of a formal plan for the project, said Paul Lebbin, aircraft cabin environment technologies research officer.
The NRC will renovate a building in Ottawa and is considering setting it up with both the simulator as well as a simulated airport terminal. The simulator will not replace the mock-ups made by airframers, but instead create an environment for several suppliers and integrators to work together on testing new concepts and evaluating how amenable they are to the passenger experience.
"The proposed cabin simulator facility would fill a niche market with a facility capable of simulating a range of cabin sizes and layouts in a realistic cabin environment," says the council.
Interior elements such as seats, lighting and inflight entertainment could be installed in the simulator and tested, and walls could be moved to simulate different cabin sizes or configurations to test out different layouts before starting an official validation process. The idea is to "de-risk" these new cabin concepts by demonstrating them in the simulator and cut down on the time it takes to develop them-all while better understanding the impact on passenger experience.
In addition to interior furnishings, the simulator will feature infrastructure such as environmental controls, cabin power and communications to create noise and vibration profiles within the cabin. The centre is also interested in recreating environment outside of the fuselage, said Lebbin.
The NRC held a workshop in Montreal with interested companies earlier this month to discuss their needs for the facility. The greater Montreal area is home to interiors specialists C&D Zodiac and Avianor, which together employ more than 1,000 people in the region, as well as airframer Bombardier.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
