Civil Aircraft Cockpit Light Environment Design And Visual Ergonomics Research

To manufacture and develop large airplane is a major science and technology projects of China. A scientific and rational design of luminous environment can enhance the man-machine work-efficiency of cockpit, as well as the safety and reliability of aircraft, especially in the vision and psychology aspects of aviator. The present thesis sought to propose some theoretical bases, which are appropriate for Chinese pilots, of cockpit luminous environment design procedures, approaches, principles and index.Cockpit luminous environment has a significant status of large aircraft ergonomics design, the present thesis pointed out the specific characteristics of aviation visual problems and the interaction with man-machine-environment system. The significance, research status and future study of cockpit luminous environment was summarized from different aspects, such as brightness range, choice of color, auxiliary lighting, glare control, relationship between luminance level and legibility.Relative vision theory was introduced, while the definition and measurement method of visual acuity as well as the features and influencing factor of reaction time were analyzed. Principles and requests of cockpit luminous design were proposed from the point of color, luminance, uniformity, contrast and scatter light. At last, cockpit lighting system was introduced and classified according to lighting pattern.A synthetic general lighting semi-physical real-time simulating and testing system was developed, which can be composed of industrial personal computer with board cards, lamp dimming system, sensor feed-back system and control software. Its technical qualifications and precision meet the requirement of lighting test experiments.The aim of the experiments in Chapter 4 was to study how harsh luminous conditions such as thunderstorm or direct sunlight in cockpit may affect pilots on visual performance and how to improve them. Negative effects on aviator's visual performance of harsh luminous environment emerged in variety of natural and weather conditions were summarized. Visual features in two typical harsh luminous environments, thunderstorm and direct sunlight, were abstracted. After literature investigation focus on the aim and current situation of the usage of thunderstorm light, its definition and install recommendations were well presented. Tests in a full-scale simulator cockpit were performed with 10 participants while visual acuity (VA), reaction time (RT) and identification accuracy (IA) were recorded as dependent variables. IA data was taken as a correction factor to correct RT data for each participant under each experimental situation to minimize testing error, with consideration of the speed-accuracy trade off (SAT) phenomenon. Data analysis result indicates that standardized VA value decreased significantly in both pulsing and step conditions in comparison with dark condition. Standardized RT value increased significantly in the step condition; on the contrary, less reaction time was obtained in pulsing condition. Such effects could be eliminated by an ambient illumination provided by fluorescent lamp in both conditions. The results are to be used as principle for optimizing lighting design with thunderstorm light.