Capabilities of the Regional Cabin Demonstrator as digital twin for a future test mock-up

• Published in: IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering Vol. 1024; no. 1; pp. 12104 - 12110
• Main Authors: Lindner, A J M, Norrefeldt, V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.01.2021
• Subjects: Air conditioning; Aircraft; Aircraft compartments; Complex systems; Conduction heating; Conductive heat transfer; Digital twins; Digitization; Environment simulation; Indoor environments; Industrial applications; Mockups; Model testing; Physiology; Thermal analysis; Thermal bridges; Thermal comfort
• ISSN: 1757-8981; 1757-899X; 1757-899X
• DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/1024/1/012104

Digital twins are essential for Industry 4.0 and the digitalization of research, development and manufacturing. By now, the models contain more and more information and are already often highly complex systems. However, an important step is to keep the model as simple as possible in order to reduce computing resources and the associated simulation time. The Indoor Environment Simulation Suite (IESS) is a tool to generate a zonal model from a CAD geometry. It is designed to simulate the transient indoor climate in a short time, while still considering all important physical processes (heat conduction, radiation, convection). After the zonal model has been generated, the user can parameterize it specifically to the application and couple it with other models when needed. Here, a new approach is to integrate a thermo-physiological model of the human body in order to make statements about the human perception of thermal comfort. This is of particular interest in early development phases in order to assess air conditioning strategies as well as structural or technical adaptions due to thermal bridges or other influences on the cabin climate. In this paper a concept will be presented where the zonal model is coupled with the thermo-physiological model to investigate selected case studies on how thermal comfort in a regional aircraft can be assessed and considered in early design phases. The cabin model is based on a new type of regional aircraft for which a mock-up is currently being built in order to perform subject test at the Fraunhofer Institute in Holzkirchen. The thermal model can thus make statements in advance about how test scenarios should be carried out in order to gain the greatest possible benefit from the subject study tests, where the number of different tests is limited.