Unit 3

CREW STATION, PASSENGERS,

AND PAYLOAD
• At the conceptual design level it is not necessary to go into the details of
crew-station design, such as the actual design and location of controls and
instruments, or the details of passenger and payload provisions. However,
the basic geometry of the crew station and payload/passenger
compartment must be considered so that the subsequent detailed cockpit
design and payload integration efforts will not require revision of the
overall aircraft.
 CREW STATION
• The crew station will affect the conceptual design primarily in the vision
requirements. Requirements for unobstructed outside vision for the pilot can
determine both the location of the cockpit and the fuselage shape in the
vicinity of the cockpit.
• For example, the pilot must be able to see the runway while on final approach,
so the nose of the aircraft must slope away from the pilot's eye at some
specified angle. While this may produce greater drag than a more streamlined
nose, the need for safety overrides drag considerations. Similarly, the need for
over-side vision may prevent locating the cockpit directly above the wing.
• When laying out an aircraft's cockpit, it is first necessary to decide what range
of pilot sizes to accommodate. For most military aircraft, the design
requirements include accommodation of the 5th to the 95th percentile of male
pilots, (i.e., a pilot height range of 65.2-73.1 in.). Due to the expense of
designing aircraft that will accommodate smaller or larger pilots, the services
exclude such people from pilot training.
• cockpit layout uses a typical 13-deg seatback angle, but seatback anglesof
30 deg are in use (F-16), and angles of up to 70 deg have been considered
for advanced fighter studies.
• This entails a substantial penalty in outside vision for the pilot, but can
improve his ability to withstand high-g turns and also can reduce drag
because of a reduction in the cockpit height.
• ALPHA_overnose = ALPHA_approach + 0.07 V_Approach
• The vision angle looking upward is also important. Transport and bomber
aircraft should have unobstructed vision forwards and upwards to at least
20 deg above the horizon.
• The cockpit of a transport aircraft must contain anywhere from two to
four crew members as well as provisions for radios, instruments, and
stowage of map cases and overnight bags.
• The cockpit dimensions shown in Fig. 9.2 will provide enough room for
most military ejection seats. An ejection seat is required for safe escape
when flying at a speed which gives a dynamic pressure above about 230
psf (equal to 260 knots at sea level).
• At speeds approaching Mach 1 at sea level (dynamic pressure above
1200), even an ejection seat is unsafe and an encapsulated seat or
separable crew capsule must be used. These are heavy and complex. A
separable crew capsule is seen on the FB-111 and the prototype B-lA.
 PASSENGER COMPARTMENT
• "Pitch" of the seats is defined as the distance from the back of one seat to
the back of the next. Pitch includes fore and aft seat length as well as leg
room.
• "Headroom" is the height from the floor to the roof over the seats.
• Table 9.1 provides typical dimensions and data for passenger
compartments with first-class, economy, or high-density seating.
• There should be no more than three seats accessed from one aisle, so an
aircraft with more than six seats abreast will require two aisles. Also, doors
and entry aisles are required for approximately every 10-20 rows of seats.
These usually include closet space, and occupy 40-60 in. of cabin length
each.
• The cabin cross section and cargo bay dimensions (see below) are used to
determine the internal diameter of the fuselage.
• The fuselage external diameter is then determined by estimating the
required structural thickness. This ranges from 1 in for a small business or
utility transport to about 4 in for a Jumbo Jet.
 CARGO PROVISIONS
• Cargo must be carried in a secure fashion to prevent shifting while in
flight.
• Large civilian transports use standard cargo containers that are pre-
loaded with cargo and luggage and then placed into the belly of the
aircraft.
• During conceptual design it is best to attempt to use an existing container
rather than requiring purchase of a large inventory of new containers.
• Two of the more widely used cargo containers are shown in Fig. 9.4. Of the
smaller transports, the Boeing 727 is the most widely used, and the 727
container shown is available at virtually every commercial airport.
• To accommodate these containers, the belly cargo compartments require
doors measuring approximately 70 in. on a side. As was discussed in the
section on wing vertical placement, low-wing transports usually have two
belly cargo compartments, one forward of the wing box and one aft.
• The cargo volume per passenger of a civilian transport ranges from about
8.6-15.6 ft3 per passenger (Ref. 24). The smaller number represents a small
short-haul jet (DC-9). The larger number represents a transcontinental jet (B-
747). The DC-10, L-1011, Airbus, and B-767 all have about 11 ft cube per
passenger. Note that these volumes provide room for paid cargo as well as
passenger luggage.
• Smaller transports don't use cargo containers, but instead rely upon hand-
loading of the cargo compartment. For such aircraft a cargo provision of 6-8
ft cube per passenger is reasonable.
• The cross section of the cargo compartment is extremely important for a
military transport aircraft. The C-5, largest of the U.S. military transports, is
sized to carry so-called "outsized" cargo, which includes M-60 tanks
helicopters, and large trucks. The C-5 cargo bay is 19 ft wide, 13\/z ft high:
and 121 ft long
 WEAPONS CARRIAGE
• Carriage of weapons is the purpose of most military aircraft.
• Traditional weapons include guns, bombs, and missiles. Lasers and other
exotic technologies may someday become feasible as airborne weapons
• The weapons are a substantial portion of the aircraft's total weight. This
requires that the weapons be located near the aircraft's center of gravity.
Otherwise the aircraft would pitch up or down when the weapons are
released
• Missiles differ from bombs primarily in that missiles are powered. Today,
virtually all missiles are also guided in some fashion. Most bombs are
"dumb," or unguided, and are placed upon a target by some bombsight
mechanism or computer which releases them at the proper position and
velocity so that they free-fall to the desired target. However
"smartbombs,“ which have some guidance mechanism, are also in use.
• Missiles are launched from the aircraft in one of two ways. Most of the
smaller missiles such as the AIM-9 are rail-launched. A rail-launcher is
mounted to the aircraft, usually at the wingtip or on a pylon under the
wing. Attached to the missile are several mounting lugs, which slide onto
the rail as shown on Fig. 9.5. For launch, the missile motor powers the
missile down the rail and free of the aircraft.
• Ejection-launch is used mainly for larger missiles. The missile is attached to
the aircraft through hooks which are capable of quick-release, powered by
an explosive charge. This explosive charge also powers two pistons !hat
shove the missile away from the aircraft at an extremely high acceleration.
The missile motor is lit after it clears the aircraft by some specified
distance.
• Bombs can also be ejected, or can simply be released and allowed to fall
free of the aircraft.
• External carriage is the lightest and simplest, and offers the most flexibility
for carrying alternate weapon stores.
• Externally-carried weapons have extremely high drag. At near-sonic
speeds, a load of external bombs can have more drag than the entire rest
of the aircraft. Supersonic flight is virtually impossible with pylon-mounted
external weapons, due to drag and buffeting. (Wing tip-mounted missiles
are small, and have fairly low drag.)
• To avoid these problems, semisubmerged or conformally-carried weapons
may be used. Conformal weapons mount flush to the bottom of the wing
or fuselage. Semisubmerged weapons are half-submerged in an
indentation on the aircraft. This is seen on the F-4 for air-to-air missiles.
• Semisubmerged carriage offers a substantial reduction in drag, but
reduces flexibility for carrying different weapons. Also, the indentations
produce structural weight penalty on the airplane. Conformal carriage
doesn intrude into the aircraft structure, but has slightly higher drag than
the semisubmerged carriage.
• During conceptual layout, there are several aspects of weapons carriage
that must be considered once the type of carriage is selected. Foremost is
the need to remember the loading crew. They will be handling large,
heavy, and extremely dangerous missiles and bombs.
• They may be working at night, in a snowstorm, on a rolling earner deck,
and under attack. Missiles must be physically attached to the mounting
hooks or slid down the rail then secured by a locking mechanism.
• Electrical connections must be made to the
• guidance mechanism, and the safety wire must be removed from the
fusing mechamsm.
• For a eJector-type launcher, the explosive charge must be inserted. All of
this cannot be done if the designer, to reduce drag, has provided only a
few inches of clearance around the missile. The loading crew absolutely
must have sufficient room in which to work.
• Clearance around the missiles and bombs is also important for safety. To
insure that the weapons never strike the ground, the designer should
provide at least a 3-in. clearance to the ground in all aircraft attitudes.
 GUN INSTALLATION
• The gun has been the primary weapon of the air-to-air fighter since the
first World War I scout pilot took a shot at an opposing scout pilot with a
handgun. For a time during the 1950's it was felt that the then-new air-to
air missiles would replace the gun, and in fact several fighters such as the
F-4 and F-104 were originally designed without guns. History proved that
missiles cannot be solely relied upon, and all new fighters are being
designed with guns.
• The standard U.S. air-to-air gun today is the M61Al "Vulcan" six-barrel
gatling gun, shown in Fig. 9.9. This is used in the F-15, F-16, F-18, and
others. Note the ammunition container. This must be located near the aft
end of the gun. Rounds of ammo are fed out of the container ("drum")
through feed chutes and into the gun. Ammo is loaded into the drum by
attaching an ammo loading cart to the feed chute shown. The door to this
loading chute must be accessible from the ground.
• An air-to-air gun such as the M61Al can produce a recoil force on the
order of two tons. A large anti-tank gun such as the GAU-8 used in the A-
10 can produce recoil force five times greater.
• To avoid a sudden yawing motion from firing, guns should be located as
near as possible to the centerline of the aircraft. On the A-10, the nose
landing gear is offset to one side to allow the gun to be exactly on the
centerline.
• When a gun is fired, it produces a bright flash and a large cloud of smoke.
The gun muzzle should be located so that these do not obscure the pilot's
vision. Also, being very noisy, a gun should be located away from the
cockpit.
• The cloud of smoke produced by a gun can easily stall a jet engine if
sucked into the inlet. This should also be considered when locating a gun.