Innovative Bell ADT upgrade puts a premium on safety

Bell Equipment’s new Mark VI D-Series Articulated Dump Trucks (ADTs), introduced early in 2009 by the South African heavy equipment manufacturer, are poised to keep the company ahead of the pack in terms of global ADT innovation and technology.

The company’s ADT Product Marketing Manager, Stephen Jones said that the upgrade is part of the Bell Equipment’s strategic evolutionary approach to product development so as to keep abreast of the ever-changing marketplace and take onboard feedback from its customer base.

“The Mark VI upgrade has been 18 months in development through Bell Equipment’s innovative and industry leading Product Development Process. This multi-faceted programme sets a timeline as to who is involved in the process and at what stage to ensure the development is competently managed and monitored. The programme ensures that we deliver both on time and to meet customer expectations,” he said.

The Mark VI upgrade focuses largely on electronic upgrades and enhancements to the operator station to further improve safety, ease of operation, noise level reduction and vehicle protection. Along with the standard features of the Mark VI upgrade, customers are also able to choose from a variety of new safety-focused options including tyre pressure monitoring, reverse cameras, lockout kits and full ISO handrails.

More driving comfort and productivity
Operator comfort reaches a new high with the advent of Bell’s “Comfort Ride” option, which is available on the B35, B40 and B50 models. This option is geared to provide increased cost effectiveness and reduced maintenance for a low additional cost.

Jones explained: “The Comfort Ride system makes uses of a fully reactive hydraulic suspension on the front axle and a simple but highly effective double stage sandwich block system on the rear axle. The front suspension continually monitors and reacts to road conditions while the mechanical system on the rear improves the ride while the truck is unladen. A 66% improvement in operator whole body vibration exposure levels measured for the total cycle was achieved during on-site testing.”

Jones believes that although Europe is more advanced in terms of legislation to reduce whole body vibration levels, there are potential productivity benefits in all markets. “On long bumpy hauls greater comfort allows the operator to travel faster, particularly while unladen, which leads to significantly reduced cycle times and increased productivity.”

Linked to driver comfort is noise reduction, the levels of which have been further reduced in Bell ADTs thanks to focused changes including a new headliner, hydraulic damper and additional strategically placed insulation in the cab.

Outside of the normal ISO sound tests trucks were measured during operation to identify which specific frequencies led to discomfort for the operators. Once these frequencies were identified they were then individually targeted and minimised to achieve a significantly improved perception of the noise levels experienced by the driver.

State-of-the-art working environment
Indeed, the most visible changes to the ADT can be found in the cab where the gear selection and bin-tip lever are now incorporated into a fully sealed switch module. Apart from reducing wear and tear, this arrangement has also optimised the cab’s ergonomics by placing important controls within easy reach of the operator. The layout is also significantly simpler and easy to operate.

“One of the most innovative additions is the keyless start feature, which is on all Bell ADTs,” said Jones. “The keyless start can be protected by a numerical code, which would need to be entered by the operator before the truck can be started. The design of different packaged options, which can be set up to allow easy on-site management and automatic expiry of codes, will give site management greater control of who can operate which vehicles and when.”

the keyless engine stop also includes a standard turbo spin down feature to regulate spin down time according to how hard the engine has been working. Furthermore a pitch and roll measurement device has been fitted to the rear chassis to allow engineer’s to include additional technology into the machine’s software.

Continues Jones: “Safety features are becoming increasingly important in the marketplace and our engineer’s have incorporated industry-leading improvements to the Mark VI ADTs. For example, the park brake application is automatic when selecting neutral and neutral cannot be selected at speed. Improper use of the park brake is often identified as the root cause for on-site accidents, by automating the application the possibility of operator error is greatly reduced.”

"Importantly most of the changes are simple yet highly effective, such as the Hill Assist feature whereby the inclinometer measures the angle of the vehicle and cross-references this with the exclusive on-board weighing feature. The beauty of this feature is that the park brake will only be released once a pre-programmed engine torque has been reached to ensure a controlled pull away with no rollback, even on the steepest of inclines.”

Similarly the machine angle and payload are cross-referenced on pull away so that if the vehicle is unladen and on relatively flat terrain it will automatically pull away in second gear. Apart from guaranteeing a smooth pull away and shifting, this feature also saves fuel by cutting out the unnecessary shift from first to second gear.

The roll detector can also be used on site to set limits for when the bin tip function can be activated. If the vehicle is sitting at an angle where lifting the bin might cause instability, the software will prevent the bin from tipping. The operator will be warned of the potentially dangerous action on the display monitor. The customer can set up the limiting angle for site-specific conditions.

Other new features aimed at safer operation include the option to activate an automatic hooter, which will sound when changing between drive and reverse as well as when the payload has been reached during loading.

As a preventative measure the customer can also now choose to have the vehicle automatically enter a limp home mode if it is significantly overloaded. This will limit the vehicle speed to ensure safety but will still allow the vehicle to finish the haul cycle.

Fleetm@tic – the next generation
Coupled to the electronic innovations are enhancements to Bell Equipment’s global fleet tracking system, Fleetm@tic. With the second generation Fleetm@tic system, Bell Equipment is the first heavy equipment OEM to offer its customers a fully global remote fleet management system with pole-to-pole coverage.

Fleetm@tic Manager, Philip Nel said: “Fleetm@tic will be a standard feature on all Mark VI ADTs but more importantly for our international customers our website and Fleetm@tic reports be available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian with more languages to follow in the second quarter of 2009. Likewise the Mark VI MDU (Monitor Display Unit) and diagnostics will be available in the same languages.”

He added that benefits of the new system include the introduction of a unique driver identification enabling customers to create a unique ID for each driver. The ID will be reported on Fleetm@tic and the customer will receive a driver scoring to assist customers in directing focus to drivers needing training or applause.

“Other changes include shift reports as customers now have an option of up to three shift reports starting at customer selected time intervals. For customers in the rental sector there are time bar reports to indicate when a machine has been working,” said Nel. Customers are also able to geofence a machine thereby limiting it to only operate in a specific geographic area with the option to limit the machine’s speed should the machine travel outside its boundaries. To add further value for customers, Fleetm@tic sends notification to the customer and their nearest service centre when a service is due to ensure that scheduled maintenance takes place to increase the machine’s availability.

The Fleetm@tic machine status sends fault codes on a daily basis, which can assist with remote diagnostics of the machine.

Concludes Jones: “Features included in the Mark VI upgrade, coupled with the existing advantages of low fuel burn, low daily operating costs and high productivity, reaffirm Bell Equipment’s position as the world’s leading ADT innovator.”