All I Need Is The Air That I Breath
Kansas State University mechanical
and nuclear engineering faculty members have studied aircraft cabin
environments for more than five years.
Byron Jones, director of K-State's Engineering Experiment
Station and professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, said
past research at K-State has focused primarily on understanding air
movement within the cabin and how contaminants could be transferred
through the cabin or flushed out of the environment.
K-State now plans to take this type of research much further as
part of the Federal Aviation Administration Air Transportation
Center of Excellence for Aircraft Cabin Environment Research.
Jones, who is also associate dean for research and graduate
programs for K-State's College of Engineering, said the center is
working out details of the research, which will be unveiled in the
spring. He said the two primary areas the center will study are
aircraft cabin environment air quality and security.
Cabin environment research looks not only at the environment as
it pertains to passengers, but also how the environment can affect
the flight crew.
"Most passengers will ride an airplane for a few hours a week at
most, usually," Jones said. "The flight crews and cabin crews can
be in this environment for 30 hours per week, so it's important to
see how it affects them."
Jones said research into environmental comfort is important for
the airline industry.
"It's an important asset for aircraft manufacturers to have,"
Jones said. "If your airplane has better environment quality for
the consumer and still costs the same price, airlines will buy your
airplanes. People pay a lot of money to travel by airplane, and
they like to have a nice environment when they travel."
Security concerns pose a real challenge for the airline
industry, Jones said.
"How do you deal with an intentional
attack if the attack is invisible -- that is, somebody is releasing
something into the cabin environment that cannot be seen -- how can
we even detect it? This is what we're looking at," he said.
Jones said research on security issues is important for more
than the obvious reasons.
"Of course, we want to protect the people on the airplane from
terrorism, as well as people who could be affected by secondary
exposure," Jones said. "This research is also important to the
airline industry.
"If you have an incident on your airline, it will have a huge
negative impact on the entire industry, and the particular airline
specifically," Jones said. "If the airline has a secure environment
and knows how to deal with these factors if they arise, it will
have less of an impact."