Coupling of a zonal air and temperature distribution model with an low pressure environmental control system ducting model

Abstract

The Regional Cabin Demonstrator is developed within the Clean Sky 2 project and integrates the latest developments in sustainable and high-performance cabin interiors for enhanced passenger experience. Within this project, an innovative low pressure environmental control system (ECS) ducting is developed and integrated into the demonstrator. Together with these hardware demonstration efforts, the associated model based development capabilities are strengthened. The goal is to virtually design the aircraft prior to its actual hardware integration. Such integration requires heterogeneous submodels interaction in an overall aircraft model. The current work presents such a model coupling. On the one hand, a component database for 1D system simulation is developed. By connecting these parameterized component models, it is possible to build any desired low pressure ECS system for which the pressure drop and the air outlet flow distributions are calculated. This system model is interfaced with a zonally decomposed indoor environment Modelica-model of the Regional Cabin Demonstrator showing resulting cabin air temperature, stratification and airflow. Both models interact on the one hand because the air temperature and distribution in the air outlets generates a boundary condition for the zonal model. On the other hand, part of the cabin exhaust air is recirculated and thus generates a boundary condition for the low pressure ECS model. The coupling is performed by the functional mock-up (FMU) standard allowing to couple different models through standardized in- and outputs while maintaining protection of individual partners’ IP. The model application is demonstrated on the example of a cruise condition thermal boundary condition.