Total Design of Active Neck Support System for Economy Class Aircraft Seat

Abstract

Travel by air with long hours will create discomfort feeling for aircraft passenger especially economy class aircraft passenger. Long hour air travel will create physiological stress on aircraft passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, cabin humidity as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of aircraft passenger. The current aircraft passenger seat is equipped with a passive function where the passenger themselves needs to adjust the seat for comfort seating position. The aircraft passenger will not able to adjust the seat when the aircraft passenger is in the low activity condition. The active seat support system was developed to support the aircraft passenger actively. The first prototype of active seat support system is focus on neck section. The head position of the aircraft seat was embedded with the system to detect the head position of the passenger. During the development of the active seat support system, total design technique was used. Five conceptual designs were generated for selection. To determine the final design of active neck support system, the matrix evaluation method was used. The weight of the concept was obtained through weight analysis.