Sonix: Aircraft Rapid decompression Analysis
Modern commercial aircraft are flying at high cruise altitude (between 25kft and 40kft) in order to minimise fuel consumption and to avoid weather turbulence. At this altitude level, direct exposure to the atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature must be prevented to avoid passenger injuries or even death. Therefore all commercial aircrafts have a pressurized cabin and are thermally insulated to offer an optimum passenger comfort and safety level. However loss of pressurization does occur in service with variable level of severity, from slow depressurization due to fuselage leak to explosive decompression following an engine rotor burst.
Only in 2018, three severe decompression accidents happen on commercial aircraft:
- 28 April 2018: Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, Boeing B737-200, very rapid decompression at 32‘500ft due to a window rupture caused by an engine shrapnel. One passenger died.
- 15 May 2018: Sichuan Airlines Flight 3U8633, Airbus A319, explosive decompression at 32‘000ft due to a cockpit windshield failure.
- 13 July 2018: Ryanair Flight FR7312, Boeing B737-800NG, rapid decompression at 37‘000ft due to a sudden loss of pressurization.
In all three cases, flight continuation and a safe landing was achieved. Throughout the years, regulations (FAR25 / CS25) were put in place in order to avoid catastrophic consequences of a decompression event (cabin floor structure collapse, detached cabin part hitting occupants, etc…).
Compliance to regulations can be achieved through tests or by numerical simulation. The over pressure on cabin boundaries (bulkhead, partition, flood structure, etc…) generated by the sudden air flow exiting the fuselage in a very rapid decompression event can be accurately predicted by numerical analysis with dedicated software like ESonix.
Our Solution: ESonix
Download a ESonix V2 facts sheet
ESonix, the numeric‘s decompression software, offers a reliable, reactive and affordable way to perform a rapid aircraft decompression analysis.
Besides the regular decompression analysis giving delta pressure, and compared to existing competitors, our software features:
- complete and detailed output envelopes
- annotated plots value vs. time
- Aircraft layout at given instant showing A/C status snapshot.
- Sensitivity analysis to support the design phase by giving design trends
- Dynamical behaviour for hinged and translating decompression features
- And much more…
Do not hesitate to contact us for further details.
Online Solution for your company: ESonix
We provide quality customized services using Sonix, but we also built an web interface that wraps sonix and came up in 2015 with the first online aircraft decompression software:
Dedicated trainings for explosive decompression
numeric-GmbH provides trainings dedicated to Rapid and Explosive decompression in general, and to ESonix in particular.
An list of the proposed trainings is available here.
Stay tuned!
Because decompression is an important activity, we have a dedicated blog section. Check it out!