SCHROTH Safety Products has announced major development in their line of occupant protection products

Arns­berg, Ger­many Jan­u­ary, 2012 – SCHROTH Safe­ty Prod­ucts (SCHROTH) has 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. 

SU-62 — for­ward fac­ing seat Click to enlarge

SU-63 — side fac­ing seat Click to enlarge

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. 

SCHROTH will be pre­sent­ing the lat­est ver­sions of the SU-62 (for­ward fac­ing) and SU- 63 (side fac­ing) seat­ing at the Inter­na­tion­al Armoured Vehi­cles con­fer­ence, tak­ing place on Feb­ru­ary 21 & 22, 2012 in Farn­bor­ough UK. 

Con­tact: Tom Myers
Email: tom.myers@schroth.com
SCHROTH Safe­ty Prod­ucts, Arns­berg D- 59757 Ger­many
www.schroth.com