Innovative exploration of safe in-flightcrew escape options

The purpose of this paper is to explore various in-flight crew escape options of a prototype transport aircraft and finalize the option offering safest crew egress for different combinations of contingencies and flight conditions.

Various egress options were explored through simulation in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software using aircraft 3D CAD model and scalable digital mannequins. For this, certain important contingencies which best describe the extreme aircraft behaviour were identified. Crew escape options, which have least external interference in expected egress trajectory, were selected. Several test simulations representing each feasible combination of contingency, escape option and flight condition were simulated. The option which offers safe crew escape in each test case is deemed to be the safest egress option for the test aircraft.

Among five options explored, crew escape through forward ventral hatch provided the safest crew escape for all test cases. The selected option was validated for robustness with additional test cases modelling different anthropometric characteristics of 5th and 50th percentile pilot populations with different postures.

In-flight validation of safe crew escape option is infeasible by actual trial. Exploration of safe crew options for required number of test cases by any analytical method or by wind tunnels tests is tedious, time consuming and extremely expensive. On the other hand, exploration of safest crew option by CFD, besides being first of its kind, provides convenient option to configure, test and validate different test cases with unmatched benefits in time, cost and simplicity.