A skylight simulator for assessing cockpit display and ambient visibility for day time and night time conditions

摘要

This paper describes a new facility, named "Sky Light Simulator (SLS)", which has been achieved in Torino, Italy in 2006 by Alenia Aeronautica within an international project for the upgrade of the Tornado aircraft, including the modification of its lighting system.The facility reproduces photometric characteristics of both daylight and nightlight: it has been conceived to house real airplane cockpits so as to allow subjective and objective ground-tests for assessing display readability under different natural light conditions which could be experienced during real flights. This way, new evolutions of cockpit design as well as new display components or lay out can be analyzed before flight. The assessment of ambient lighting and display readability are both subjective, through questionnaires submitted to pilots, and objective, through measurements inside the cockpit.The technical characteristics of the facility, the assessment protocols and the outcomes of the first studies carried out within the SLS are presented in the paper.