Classifications

• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B62—LAND VEHICLES FOR TRAVELLING OTHERWISE THAN ON RAILS
  • B62D—MOTOR VEHICLES; TRAILERS
  • B62D29/00—Superstructures, understructures, or sub-units thereof, characterised by the material thereof
  • B62D29/04—Superstructures, understructures, or sub-units thereof, characterised by the material thereof predominantly of synthetic material
  • B62D29/046—Combined superstructure and frame, i.e. monocoque constructions
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B62—LAND VEHICLES FOR TRAVELLING OTHERWISE THAN ON RAILS
  • B62D—MOTOR VEHICLES; TRAILERS
  • B62D31/00—Superstructures for passenger vehicles
  • B62D31/02—Superstructures for passenger vehicles for carrying large numbers of passengers, e.g. omnibus
  • B62D31/025—Superstructures for passenger vehicles for carrying large numbers of passengers, e.g. omnibus having modular sections
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B62—LAND VEHICLES FOR TRAVELLING OTHERWISE THAN ON RAILS
  • B62D—MOTOR VEHICLES; TRAILERS
  • B62D47/00—Motor vehicles or trailers predominantly for carrying passengers
  • B62D47/02—Motor vehicles or trailers predominantly for carrying passengers for large numbers of passengers, e.g. omnibus
  • B62D47/025—Motor vehicles or trailers predominantly for carrying passengers for large numbers of passengers, e.g. omnibus articulated buses with interconnecting passageway, e.g. bellows

Definitions

• Road utility vehicle particularly a bus
• the present invention relates to a road utility vehicle, particularly a bus having a fundamentally new construction breaking with conventional vehicle body design principles.
• the solution is essentially characterised by that it consists of modules made from a respective continuous length of material in a closed "ring- shaped" fashion that are fit and secured together by a permanent bond (adhesive bond reinforced by shape-fit connection).
• the modules include a front module and a rear module (adapted to carry the front and rear running gears), as well as door and window modules arranged between the front and rear modules in an arbitrary number and order.
• the closed "ring-like” modules are made from a composite material forming a double shell structure, the space enclosed between the double shells being filled by inertia-increasing incompressible foam material.
• a reinforcing fabric made from endless synthetic or natural reinforcing filaments (such as carbon or glass fibre), and laid in specific cases in multiple layers, is embedded in the matrix of the composite material.
• Metal brace elements inserts are embedded into the sandwich structure thus produced, with service and cable ducts also being formed in the structure.
• a complete family of vehicles may be designed. Due to the self-enclosed, closed "ring-like" arrangement of the modules the vehicle has an integral body-frame, and may be produced with high manufacturing and quality reliability and greatly reduced costs.
• the applied materials allow that the rolling mass of the vehicles is a fraction of the mass of conventional vehicles of the same category. This involves reduced energy demand, which makes the design well suited for hybrid vehicles.
• the strength and load- bearing capacity of the vehicle according to the invention rivals known solutions.
• NABI North American Bus Industries
• NABI North American Bus Industries
• This solution has the disadvantage that a significant amount of steel reinforcing elements have to be applied to provide the required strength.
• due to the applied conventional assembly technology at locations where balsa wood is machined (e.g. bored into) it crumbles away in a short time because of its high moisture capacity. Resulting from the horizontal separation this solution requires different tools for each vehicle type (category), posing significant extra costs compared to conventional manufacturing technology - thereby only one category is being manufactured.
• the vehicle thus produced does not have an integral body-frame.
• Patent specification with registration number EP1138567A2 discloses designs of the body of a railway vehicle.
• the carriage body is supported on a frame and bogies.
• the body is divided into segments that are subdivided into the following modules: roof plates, door posts, window columns, side wall supports, floor plates, and step modules.
• the modules are connected by different releasable and permanent interfaces.
• This solution allows the creation of a vehicle body of a desired size by assembling an arbitrary number of standardized LEGO-like building blocks into identical segments forming the vehicle body.
• the modules are made from a composite material forming a double shell structure, where the space enclosed between the double shells is filled - depending on the expected load - by core material, reinforcing truss structures, metal inserts, etc.
• the solution has further advantages: it has an unloaded weight significantly lower than conventional metal structures, and it is also corrosion-resistant.
• Drawbacks of the solution are that individual components (building blocks) have necessarily very different structural arrangements, applying several different kinds of material having different physical parameters, the locations of joints - especially of components located in different planes - are stress concentration points and thus require dedicated reinforcement, and that manufacturing requires strict technological discipline as well as long assembly time.
• the objective of the present invention has been to provide a utility vehicle that is environmentally friendly, has low operating costs and long service life, that can be optimally adapted to the requirements of urban and suburban public transport, and provides an optimal level of passenger comfort.
• the object of the present invention is therefore a road utility vehicle that, in its assembled state, possesses power sources known per se, front and rear running gears, a drive train, and at its front wall has installed all components required for steering, and also comprises systems for control, communications, heating, ventilation, air condition as well as information technology systems.
• the body of the vehicle consists of modules having a composite-material external and internal shell, with the space enclosed between the shell being filled with a core material to form a sandwich structure.
• Novel specific features of the present invention are that the individual modules - a front module encompassing the front wheel arch, a rear module encompassing the rear wheel arch, and an arbitrary number of window modules and door modules arranged between the front and rear modules in an arbitrary order - are implemented as self-contained units capable of bearing loads in themselves, and are made from a respective continuous length of material disposed in a closed ring-shaped fashion, the modules being arranged perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the road utility vehicle, and are connected by adhesive bonding in a manner known per se in a positioned fashion by a groove and a connecting profile disposed along their respective adjacent circumferential edges located at planes perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the body to form an integral body-frame structure.
• the composite material of the individual self- enclosed "ring-like” modules is reinforced with a fabric consisting of high-strength endless filaments, such as carbon or glass filaments, the fabric being in specific cases arranged in multiple layers, and the space enclosed by the external and internal shell is filled with PUR foam or epoxy foam to form a quasi-elastic homogenized core material.
• the endless reinforcing filaments disposed in the external and internal shells constitute a quadraxial fabric.
• the core material is prefabricated in the form of boards having incisions on both sides running for instance in a square mesh pattern.
• the road utility vehicle according to the present invention may be implemented in different ways depending on the number and order of the window and door modules to obtain vehicles of different category. The following embodiments are particularly preferred:
• the vehicle has two door modules and one window module arranged between the front and rear modules such that the window module is flanked by the door modules.
• the vehicle has two door modules and two window modules; the module group constituted by the two window modules is surrounded at each side by a respective door module.
• Another preferred embodiment of our utility vehicle family has three door modules and two window modules.
• the two window modules are surrounded at each side by a respective door module.
• the vehicle is articulated, consisting of two vehicle body portions connected by an articulation mechanism in a conventional manner.
• the rearmost unit of the front body portion is a window module comprising wheel arches.
• the front module comprises as only functionally separate portions a floor having front wheel arches, side walls and a front wall attached thereto, and a roof supported by window columns. These portions constitute an integral unit made from a continuous length of material.
• a door opening on one of the side walls of the front module, and disposing a movable ramp recess in the floor in the vicinity of the door opening.
• the window module comprises as functional components a floor and side walls attached thereto, as well as a roof supported by window posts, where the module is implemented as a self-enclosed unit made from a single length of material in a ring-like fashion.
• a bench seat or bench seats with backrests are disposed along at least one of the side walls of the window module aligned with the plane of the floor and the side wall to increase the corner rigidity of the module.
• the door module is identical in dimensions and shape to the window module, the only difference being that a door opening delimited by door posts is disposed on one side of the door module.
• a ramp recess is disposed in the floor of the door module in the vicinity of the door opening.
• the rear module of the utility vehicle comprises as functionally separate portions a floor having rear wheel arches, side walls attached to the floor, and a roof supported by window posts and a rear wall.
• a window opening and a rear opening are disposed on the rear wall, with a back seat row having a platform-like configuration being secured to the rear wall and to the floor of the module.
• both axially extending sides of the roof of each module have their cross section increased in an arcuate manner, allowing service ducts to be formed therein.
• the service ducts disposed along each side of the roof of the modules form longitudinal service ducts extending parallel with the longitudinal axis of the road utility vehicle, with, in specific cases, brace (stiffener) tubes being inserted in the service ducts.
• Fig. 1 shows the perspective view of a front module in its unassembled state
• Fig. 2 shows the perspective view of a window module
• Fig. 3 shows the perspective view of a door module
• Fig. 4a is the perspective view of a rear module
• Fig. 4b showing the side elevation view of the same module and Fig. 4c showing the rear view of the same module;
• Figs. 5a, 5b showing a sectional view, schematically illustrate the interconnection of individual modules according to details "A" and "B" indicated in Figs. 3, 4a, 4b
• Fig. 6 shows the perspective view of a further embodiment of the front module
• Fig. 7 showing the schematic perspective view of a bus consisting of five modules
• Fig. 8 showing the schematic perspective view of a bus consisting of six modules
• Fig. 9 showing the schematic perspective view of a bus consisting of seven modules
• Fig. 10 showing the schematic perspective view of an articulated bus consisting of ten modules, all the illustrated bus variants constituting preferred embodiments of the present invention.
• the body of the road utility vehicle according to the present invention is therefore assembled from modules implemented as self-contained load bearing segments.
• Preferred embodiments of the modules are illustrated in Figs. 1-4, and a further arrangement is shown in Fig. 6.
• Fig. 1 shows a preferred embodiment of a front module I in unassembled state.
• Functional support for the roof 3a reinforced at both sides in an arcuate manner, is provided by left and right side walls 9a, both attached to a floor 6a fitted with front wheel arches 7, and by a front wall 5, where in a preferred embodiment longitudinal service ducts 8 extending along the length of the roof 3a. (The role of the service ducts will be detailed later on.)
• a self-enclosed "ring-like” structure, having a sandwich-type arrangement, is formed by these functional components.
• the sandwich structure is constituted by an external and internal composite shell and a quasi-elastic core material applied to fill the region enclosed between the shells. (Details of the sandwich arrangement will be described below in relation to Fig. 5).
• the inside arrangement of the front module I is based on a conventional vehicle arrangement, it has a number of novel features. Since the solution according to the preferred embodiment does not apply a side door, no bottleneck occurs for passenger flow, and free space 2 becomes available between the front wheel arches 7 that may be utilized for accommodating the wheelchair of a handicapped passenger. (This can be seen in the embodiment shown Fig. 10.)
• the assembled front module I includes the component system allowing all required vehicle components to be mounted on or inside the front wall 5, such as the adjustable safety steering wheel column complete with all components required for steering, including the front running gear and the elements for mounting it, the entire instrument set together with communications and informations systems, as well as components related to heating, ventilation, and air condition. Since these components are well known in the art, they are not shown in the drawing.
• Fig. 2a shows the perspective view of a window module II.
• the length of the modules such as that of the window module II, was chosen to correspond to twice the standard seat row distance (1.5- 1.7 m) applied for conventional buses; this is favourable from the aspect of strength, allows the creation of different vehicle assembly variants (different vehicle categories), and allows for varied seat arrangements.
• this module comprises window posts 4b attached to the side walls 9b, a roof 3b having service ducts 8, and a floor 6b, which components are integrated in a self-contained integral unit. In this case also, individual components are connected in an arcuate manner, without undercuts.
• the load-bearing capacity and corner rigidity of the window module II is significantly improved by bench seats with backrests 10 that are arranged at the connection of the side walls 9b and floor 6b aligned with the planes thereof.
• the material and arrangement of the bench seats with backrests 10 is identical to that of the modules (double composite-shell sandwich structure filled with core material).
• the seats are manufactured utilizing tools lowered in the floor 6b. Thereby, in case the bench seats with backrests 10 are omitted from a window module II either on one side or both, a flat insert may be applied to provide that the floor 6b remains even.
• An emergency exit opening 1 is also disposed in the roof 3b.
• Fig. 2b shows the rear view of the window module II.
• the arcuate configuration of both sides of the roof 3b providing the required amount of corner reinforcement can be observed in the drawing.
• the service ducts 8 disposed in the roof 3b constitute longitudinal channels extending along the full length of the vehicle once it is assembled. If so required (in cases where higher than usual loads are present), brace tubes may be inserted into these longitudinal channels, the brace tubes being made expediently from composite material with an expansion coefficient nearly identical to that of the material of the modules.
• the window module II may in specific cases be made to include wheel arches. This embodiment (not shown separately in the drawings) is applied for articulated vehicles as the last module of the front body portion (see Fig. 0).
• Fig. 3 shows the perspective view of a door module III.
• the overall dimensions of the door module III are the same as the overall dimensions of the window module II, and thereby the former may be derived from the latter.
• the modules may be manufactured utilizing the same tool applying different tool inserts.
• a door module III comprising a door opening 25a delimited by door posts 12 may be produced.
• a ramp recess 16 is formed in place of the bench seat with backrest 10 (utilizing a suitable insert).
• the door module III constitutes a single "ring-like" integral unit consisting of a completely flat floor 6b portion, side walls 9b connected thereto in an arcuate manner, door posts 12 that are also adapted for mounting thereon the components of the door mechanism, and a roof 3b supported by the door posts 12 and by window posts 4b.
• Fig. 4 shows the perspective view of a rear module IV
• Fig. 4b and Fig. 4c respectively, show the side and rear views of the same module.
• the rear module IV constitutes a single self-contained unit consisting of a floor 6c comprising rear wheel arches 13, side walls 9c having a window opening, a rear wall 17, and a roof 3c supported by the side and rear walls.
• the roof 3c of the rear module IV is reinforced because in the assembled state of the vehicle it provides support for the evaporator unit of the air condition unit of the vehicle.
• the trolley poles are mounted on the roof 3c structure.

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
• Combustion & Propulsion (AREA)
• Transportation (AREA)
• Mechanical Engineering (AREA)
• Architecture (AREA)
• Structural Engineering (AREA)
• Body Structure For Vehicles (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Publications (1)

Family

ID=46458051

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (2)

Cited By (8)

Citations (6)

• 2011
  • 2011-12-23 HU HU1100271U patent/HU4110U/hu unknown
• 2012
  • 2012-12-19 WO PCT/HU2012/000138 patent/WO2013093531A1/en active Application Filing

Patent Citations (6)

Also Published As

Similar Documents

Legal Events