New Schmitz Cargobull Airbag
Thursday, December 17th, 2009During the winter, snow and rain can cause dangerous sheets of ice to form on the roof tarpaulins of trailers – putting vehicles and drivers at risk. However, Schmitz Cargobull’s RoofSafetyAirBag (RSAB), prevents critical ice sheet formation and the dangers and hazards that it brings. In addition, because the system protects the roof tarpaulin its service life is extended.
The system comprises an air hose, which is centrally positioned between the roof tarpaulin and bows, which inflates with air supplied from the trailer’son-board compressed air system. As a result, the roof tarpaulin is raised by about 175mm in the middle – in a similar way to a pitched roof. Once the roof is raised, water or snow collections, which form in the spaces between the bows, simply slide off – thereby preventing ice sheet formation.
The air bag retains the compressed air over several days even with the trailer decoupled. An improved hose system ensures that the pressure in the hose is only 0.05 bar when inflated and the pressure is continuously measured and corrected automatically, if changes in the external temperature occur. Thanks to optimisation of the air hose volume, much shorter hose filling and evacuation times are attained.
It is worth noting that the height of the vehicle remains within legal limits when travelling thanks to a forced venting system which is automatically initiated before the start of the journey when the driver applies pressure to the brake pedal.
The RSAB system has a small and light control unit, which is equipped with a two-colour LED display panel to enable the driver to easily monitor the air hose operating condition at any time.
The RSAB – which also works well with the sliding and lifting roofs of curtainisder semi-trailers.- can be factory fitted on new vehicles or retrofitted easily to existing trailer fleets. The retrofitting process takes about two hours by an authorised Schmitz Cargobull service partner.
