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09 Jan 12. SCHROTH Safety Products (SCHROTH) announced another major development in their line of occupant protection products. SCHROTH has been designing and manufacturing seatbelt harness systems since the 1950’s and have now put over 60 years of development and crash test experience into a new patent pending mine blast protected seating solution. Over two years of design and development work has been trialed and tested at the independent test facility of IABG in Lichtenau, Germany. Multiple full-scale mine blast test have been carried out at the end of 2011 on the new light-weight seat systems. The SCHROTH SU-62 (forward facing) and SU-63 (side facing) seating systems are tubular lightweight systems with a unique resettable energy absorbing (EA) system designed into the seat. The EA design and technology comes from the years of experience SCHROTH has with energy management in seatbelt systems. The design of the seat gives the occupant not only excellent protection in a mine blast event, but also offers excellent protection in the event of an accident or impact. The All Belts to Seat (ABTS) design allows the vehicle manufacturer to optimize the installation of the seat within the hull. An integrated foot rest can also be incorporated into the standard SU-62 seating system to further extend the range of occupant protection. The unique SCHROTH EA technology is tunable to match the size and weight of the vehicle as well as the level of protection required and
the available space within the vehicle interior. The EA is also designed to reset itself and offer high levels of protection for the secondary (slam down) event. The successful development and verification of the SU-62 seating system exceeded the requirements of the current AEP55 using full scale testing to the most extreme conditions. The verification test platform (TROSS II) was prepared in order to represent maximum global accelerations with worst case loading of the protective seating system and at the most vulnerable test location. The test platform was fully instrumented with the data acquisition systems and high-speed cameras. Part of the demanding qualification program was a test representing a 12ton vehicle with a 8kg charge of TNT under the center of the vehicle. With the current reduction on military budgets and the ongoing pressure to increase survivability on new and existing vehicle fleets, SCHROTH has found an attractive blend of affordability and improved survivability for the years to come.
09 Jan 12. The first protected passenger transit vehicle to meet the Oil and Gas industry’s ATEX Zone 2 standard for operation in hazardous and explosive environments has been produced by Supacat, the Devon, UK, based specialist vehicle and engineering company. The Protected Transit Vehicle (PTV) will be operated by Agip ENI for transporting work crews between facilities on the man-made offshore island, Complex D, which has been created in the Experimental Phase of the Kashagan oil field development in the North Caspian Sea. The PTV is based upon a 4×4 Mercedes Sprinter that has been adapted for safe use in exploration and extraction operations in the harsh environment and extreme weather conditions experienced in Kazakhstan. The PTV is fully ATEX Zone 2 compliant, thereby providing the user with the utmost confidence and the employer with the requisite regulatory compliance and on-site safety. This week Supacat delivered the first PTV to the customer. In November 2009, Agip KCO awarded Supacat a £4.5m contract for a fleet of seven PTVs. The contract marks Supacat’s entry into the Oil and Gas sector where its experience in all-terrain military vehicles and hostile environment engineering are applicable to the sector’s specialist transportation requirements. The PTV occupants are protected