For increased passenger comfort, several modern airliners, such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 XWB, feature reduced operating cabin altitudes as well as greater humidity levels the use of composite airframes has aided the adoption of such comfort-maximising practices. The Aloha Airlines Flight 243 incident, involving a Boeing 737-200 that suffered catastrophic cabin failure mid-flight, was primarily caused by its continued operation despite having accumulated more than twice the number of flight cycles that the airframe was designed to endure. This not only increased airframe weight, but also saw the use of smaller cabin windows than most other commercial passenger aircraft, intended to slow the decompression rate if a depressurization event occurred. The supersonic airliner Concorde had a particularly high pressure differential due to flying at unusually high altitude: up to 60,000 ft (18,000 m) while maintaining a cabin altitude of 6,000 ft (1,800 m). The key engineering principles learned from the Comet were applied directly to the design of all subsequent jet airliners, such as the Boeing 707.Ĭertain aircraft have presented unusual pressurization scenarios.
#200 PSI AIR COMPRESSOR FULL#
Testing involved multiple full scale pressurisation cycle tests of the entire fuselage in a water tank.
#200 PSI AIR COMPRESSOR SKIN#
The cause was found to be a combination of progressive metal fatigue and aircraft skin stresses, both of which aeronautical engineers had limited understanding at the time. While initially a success, two catastrophic failures in 1954 temporarily grounded the worldwide fleet. The practice would become widespread a decade later, particularly with the introduction of the British de Havilland Comet jetliner in 1949. While the first experimental pressurization systems saw use during the 1920s and 1930s, it was not until 1940 that a commercial aircraft would enter service with a pressurized cabin, when the Boeing 307 Stratoliner joined the Transcontinental & Western Air and Pan American Airways fleets. The cabin pressure is regulated by the outflow valve. The air is cooled, humidified, and mixed with recirculated air if necessary before it is distributed to the cabin by one or more environmental control systems. For aircraft, this air is usually bled off from the gas turbine engines at the compressor stage, and for spacecraft, it is carried in high-pressure, often cryogenic, tanks. An airliner fuselage, such as this Boeing 737, forms a cylindrical pressure vesselĬabin pressurization is a process in which conditioned air is pumped into the cabin of an aircraft or spacecraft in order to create a safe and comfortable environment for passengers and crew flying at high altitudes.
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