Aircraft Seating Arrangement with Fixed Horizontal Back
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Aircraft passenger seats face challenges in meeting safety standards, minimizing weight, optimizing space usage, providing comfort for various activities, accommodating passengers of all sizes, ensuring privacy, and maximizing storage space, while conventional designs are often heavy, restrictive, and inefficient in using cabin space.
Innovation Solution
A seating arrangement featuring a fixed seat and shell with a secondary surface that can be deployed to create a wide, angled sleeping surface, eliminating reclining mechanisms to reduce weight and increase storage, and incorporating a movable tray table and personal storage compartments to enhance comfort and space utilization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a reclining mechanism with drive motors is used to allow the seat back to move between upright and horizontal positions, then passenger comfort is improved, but the weight of the seat increases considerably
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the reclining mechanism and drive motors from the seat design, extracting the heavy mechanical components that caused weight increase. The seat back is fixed in a substantially horizontal position, eliminating the need for motors and complex mechanisms while maintaining comfort through the fixed flat surface.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using a mechanism to transform the seat back from upright to horizontal position, the invention inverts the approach by having the seat back fixed in the horizontal position from the outset, eliminating the transformation mechanism entirely.
2Ease of manufacture
If conventional aircraft passenger seats are designed with constrained width, then manufacturing cost is reduced, but passengers of above average width are compelled to occupy two adjacent seats, wasting space and money
Solution Approach 1:
The seat is designed with a width that serves multiple functions: it accommodates passengers of average width comfortably, allows passengers of above average width to sit alone, and can be arranged in various configurations (single seats, double seats, or triple seats) to maximize space utilization in different cabin layouts.
3Ease of operation
If the seat is designed to allow a passenger to lie in a flat and horizontal position, then sleeping comfort is improved, but the mechanism and drive motors add considerably to the weight and cost of the seat
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the heavy drive motors and complex reclining mechanisms from the seat design. The seat back is fixed in a substantially horizontal position, providing sleeping comfort without requiring any mechanical transformation system.
4Adaptability or versatility
If reclining mechanisms are included in the seat design, then seating flexibility is improved, but the amount of personal storage space available to the passenger is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the reclining mechanisms that occupy valuable space under and around the seat. This extraction of mechanical components creates additional volume that can be utilized for personal storage compartments, increasing the storage space available to passengers.
5Ease of manufacture
If the seat width is constrained in conventional designs, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but space efficiency and passenger satisfaction are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The seat width is designed to be universally applicable across different passenger size ranges and cabin configurations. The increased width allows the same seat design to serve multiple purposes: accommodating various passenger sizes, enabling different seating arrangements (single, double, or triple seats), and maximizing space efficiency without requiring complex manufacturing processes.
Data Source
AI summary
A aircraft passenger seating arrangement comprises a seat (1), a secondary surface (4) spaced to one side of the seat (1), in a direction substantially parallel to the width of the seat; and an infill surface (3) deployable into a space between the seat (1) and the secondary surface (4) so as to form a substantially continuous sleeping surface along the secondary surface (4), the infill surface (3) and the width of the seat (1).