PASSENGER TO FREIGHTER CONVERSION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM
2022-26-1257
05/26/2022
- Event
- Content
- As per the records from Air cargo traffic, the global volume of air freight increased rapidly in recent years with freight volumes reaching 55.9 million metric tons. The strong demand for converted freighters has been driven by a robust cargo market, one of the key factors that strongly influenced this factor was the growth of e-commerce which has been boosted by more online deliveries This paper discusses some of the key aspects that needs to be considered for passenger to Freighter conversion and its impact to the Environmental Control System of the Aircraft. One of the first design change will be to identify all the passenger amenities and remove them, depending on the Freighter configurations the air distribution needs to be modified or re-routed. Temperature needs for the Main Deck Cargo Compartment (MDCC) is much lower than the passenger variant, the temperature selection ranges for all temperature zones shall cover the natural environment with high comfort for occupants. MDCC should be complaint to class E Fire protection certification requirements. Air circulation to the Cargo and human occupied areas needs to be segregated, passenger occupied area which includes Flight deck (FD), Cabin crew, Flight crew should be supplied with stable continuous fresh air and avoid any contaminated air from the Cargo compartments. Air flow management must be adapted for Freighter version with the intention of reducing the air flow to the Cargo compartments for additional fuel savings. About half of global cargo by value travels by air, with the recent announcement from Airbus challenging Boeing cargo dominance with A350 freighter and Boeing’s statement that world freighter fleet is expected to grow 60% over the next 20 years, a robust ECS is important for cabin safety and comfort as it improves performance, increases efficiency and maintainability.
- Citation
- PATIL, A., "PASSENGER TO FREIGHTER CONVERSION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM," SAE Technical Paper 2022-26-1257, 2022, .