Cab air quality: A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF OPERATOR COMFORT

Focus on defining cab air quality, measuring it, and designing the needed performance into cabin designs and HVAC systems is intensifying.

Review the design specs for any new haul truck, excavator, dozer or other off-road machine, and you're not likely to find requirements related to cab air quality-yet. However, standards are changing and the need to optimize cab enclosure environments for air quality will grow.

Consciously or not, equipment cab engineers ask themselves questions like these: What forces or factors can potentially harm operators in equipment cabs? How can design mitigate these potential hazards? It's thinking like this that has resulted in industry-standard operator enclosure safety features such as fall-on protection (FOPS) and rollover protection (ROPS) to counter accidental external forces, as well as ergonomic features inside the cab to prevent physical fatigue and discomfort.