Passengers' seat vibration exposure on turboprop aircraft flights.
Neil J Mansfield, Peter Vink, Gerbera Vledder and 4 others
Turboprop seat vibration peaks at 16.5 Hz (engine) and 100 Hz (propeller blades), is highest during takeoff and landing, and falls below ISO health caution limits.
Standard comfort weightings remove most of the high-frequency vibration passengers actually feel.
Key findings
1Vibration was dominated by tonal peaks at 16.5 Hz (engine rotation at 1000 rpm) and 100 Hz (blade-pass frequency of the 6-bladed propeller), with the highest magnitudes occurring during runway/takeoff and landing phases.
2All frequency-weighted vibration magnitudes were below the ISO Health Guidance Caution Zone for every axis and every flight phase, indicating low exposure risk.
3ISO2631-1 frequency weightings remove 98% of 100 Hz vibration in the horizontal direction and 91% in the vertical direction, so the standard under-represents the high-frequency tonal content that is the dominant feature of turboprop cabin vibration.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only two flights on the same aircraft type, on the same day, so the results cannot be generalised to other turboprop models, jet aircraft, or different operating conditions. Vibration was measured only at the seat surface. Contact points such as armrests and feet were not assessed, so the full passenger vibration environment is not captured. No subjective comfort or discomfort ratings were collected from passengers; the findings are purely physical measurements. The two flights differed in weather (the second had rain and cloud), introducing a confound for the landing-phase comparison.
Declared interests
Funded by the EU CleanSky ComfDemo project (Horizon 2020, grant H2020-CS2-CFP08-2018-01). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 'below health caution zone' result as meaning passengers will not notice or be bothered by the vibration. The paper itself notes that ISO2631-1 reactions are highly context-dependent and that people complain at magnitudes only just above perception thresholds. More importantly, the standard weightings remove 91–98% of the 100 Hz blade-pass tone that dominates the turboprop spectrum, so the 'low' reading does not reflect what passengers actually feel.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →