A Civil Aircraft Cockpit Layout Evaluation Method Based on Layout Design Principles

Abstract

As technology continues to leap forward and innovations advance, the systems of civil aircraft are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. Accordingly, there is a rising amount of information to be processed by pilots in the cockpit, increasing their cognitive burden, which significantly threatens the safety of flight. Thus, designers have formulated cockpit layout principles relating to importance, frequency of use, functional grouping, and operation sequence on the basis of ergonomics, which can effectively reduce the cognitive burden for pilots. The degree to which the cockpit layout of a model conforms to the four design principles can indicate its ergonomic design level. In accordance with the concepts of the above four cockpit layout principles, evaluation methods for determining their respective conformity to the four design principles were proposed in this paper. These methods use the operational sequence of cockpit system controls used in the normal flight mission of the actual aircraft type as the evaluation data source. Subsequently, the total evaluation results for cockpit layout were obtained using the weighted accumulation method. Lastly, the process for evaluating the cockpit layouts of civil aircraft was illustrated using the cockpits of the A320 series and B737NG series as examples. Based on the final evaluation results, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed evaluation method was verified.