Experimental Design Based Aircraft Egress Analysis Using VacateAir - An Aircraft Evacuation Simulation Model

Abstract

This paper studies the individual and interactive effects of fuselage width, aisle width, exit aperture width, seat arrangement, seat pitch and motivation (i.e., competitiveness in evacuation) on aircraft evacuation efficiency, using Analysis of Variance and Taguchi Design of Experiment. The purpose of this work is not only to reveal the effects of these factors and supply valuable references to aircraft designers, but also to prepare the foundation of considering “evacuation” as a subsystem in System-of-Systems Design of new aircraft. VacateAir , a multi-agent stochastic aircraft evacuation simulation model, is used to perform evacuation simulation and produce data for statistical analyses. The analyses reveal that there is complex relationship between physical factors and mean total evacuation times, motivation and mean total evacuation times, as well as the interactive effects between physical factors and motivation on mean total evacuation times. Main findings from analyses are that the evacuation motivation should always be incorporated when studying the effects of physical factors, and increasing space does not necessary guarantee increasing of evacuation efficiency in that the increased space may lead to more direct competition for exiting, especially in competitive behavior.