New ambulance is “industry’s most advanced yet” 11 March 2014

A new A&E (accident and emergency) ambulance, developed by Iveco and Cartwright, is being billed as the most advanced yet.

Currently available for trials with NHS Ambulance Trusts and private ambulance operators, it is based on the Iveco Daily 50C17 chassis with a new Cartwright body, which uses materials proven in aerospace and motorsport.

Cartwright says the body is unique, not least because it is easily transferable onto a second chassis of any make and wheelbase during a projected 15-year minimum service life.

Meanwhile, the Iveco chassis gives it structural rigidity and long-term durability, combined with the Daily's well-known turning circle. And the 3.0 litre, 170bhp, 400Nm torque FPT Industrial diesel engine on the demonstrator will meet blue light requirements.

Wes Linton, blue light development engineer at Cartwright Group, explains that the bodywork combines high-strength FRP (fibre-reinforced plastic) laminates, a high density structural foam core, plastics manufactured by VEKA and high-strength aluminium extrusions.

FRP laminate offers 90% of the tensile strength of carbon fibre but at a much lower cost. Body joints are also fully bonded, he says, avoiding the localised stress raisers of welded, bolted or rivet joints.

Inner skins and lockers are also made from the same VEKA pvc, for ease of cleaning and infection control. And internal fittings, such as defibrillator and oxygen cylinder brackets, are mounted using bonded fixings.

Also key to the modular body design wass Cartwright's decision to mount the lightweight body onto a reinforced substructure for mounting the battery lockers, step wells, steps and tail-lift.

Meanwhile, the Daily cab has been mounted with a new aerodynamic kit developed by Cartwright, combining a cab air deflector with aerodynamic wings to push air over the light bar and around the body sides.

And the innovation continues into the ambulance electrical system, says Linton. "These are worked extremely hard, with constant parasitic communication loads combined with regular high-current requirements for the tail-lift. For this new body, we have developed what we are confident is the most advanced electrical system of its type in the blue-light sector."

This sees a dc-dc step-up charger providing 100A continuous charge capacity to feed a split-charge system. This is monitored and controlled using the battery bank state-of-charge, with predefined precedence and adjustable thresholds.

Linton explains that the electrical control system was designed to use the CANbus where possible and to integrate directly with telematics.

Using twin CAN networks, he says, the Intellitec iPLC-based control system has direct control over all aspects of base vehicle interfaces, battery management and charge control, systems control and event logging.

"From an early stage we knew Cartwright was working on something very special and we were keen to support them," comments Martin Flach, product director at Iveco.

Author
Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Iveco
The Cartwright Group

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