New bus features composite floors from Structural Composites

Structural Composites floor in new ARBOC bus.

Structural Composites (Melbourne, Fla., USA) announced at the American Public Transportation Assn. (APTA) show in October in that it has manufactured a composite floor system for a new public bus designed by ARBOC Specialty Vehicles LLC (Middlebury, Ind., USA) and industrial design firm Exreme Design. The floor is made using Structural Composites' Prisma Single Skin technology, originally developed to reduce weight on the U.S. Navy’s Combatant Craft.

The flooring system was key to saving weight sufficient enought that ARBOC was able to add passenger seats to the bus, thereby increasing its carrying capacity. Don Roberts, president and CEO of ARBOC Specialty Vehicles, states, “New buses are being impacted by a change in the standard passenger weight. We now have to design to a standard passenger that weighs 175 lb [79 kg]. Prior to this the standard weight was 150 lb [68 kg]. While other bus manufacturers are having to pull seats from their buses to meet the new weight requirements, we have been able to not only keep the same number of seats, but have been able to add additional seats due to the significant weight savings we get from the innovative Prisma Single Skin floor system.

Structural Composites and the Prisma Single Skin Technology were recently awarded the Congressional Medal of Merit by U.S. Rep. Bill Poesy (Fla.).