Ford Motor Co. has begun to offer a fire-suppression system as an option for its Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

The new option is an active system using sensors, a timer, and a manual override to prevent gas tank fires during rear-end crashes. It is Ford's answer to a passive system that an independent company has been marketing since 2002.

The Crown Victoria, which according to Ford accounts for at least 80 percent of the police cruisers in service in the United States, was the subject of an investigation three years ago by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A panel studied several fatal fires that had started when gas tanks in the interceptors had ruptured after high-impact rear-end collisions.

An optional fire-suppression system sits over the rear axle of the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

Ford's position is that the Crown Victoria is no more susceptible to fire than any other vehicle, but its use in service exposes it to greater-than-average crash hazards. As a police car used in routine traffic stops, the cruiser spends a lot of time stopped on the shoulders of highways, where it is exposed to oncoming traffic. NHTSA agreed that the design of the car did not merit a recall.

In May 2003, a few months after NHTSA finished its investigation, Ford came out with a safety upgrade kit that included shields to protect the gas tank from possible puncture sources, including the stabilizer bar bracket, differential bolts, and fuel tank straps.

The new Ford option was designed in cooperation with an aerospace company, Aerojet, which will supply the suppressant tanks and gas generators for the system. Limited production began in June for late 2005 model cars, and Aerojet opened a full-scale production plant at Socorro, N.M., in July.

The system, which is to be installed under the backseat and over the rear axle, is designed to deploy after the struck vehicle has come to a stop. According to Michael Blackmer, a police vehicle specialist engineer for Ford, the impact of a car going 50 or 60 miles per hour will send a police cruiser rolling 150 to 200 feet in about four seconds.

Sensors and a processor must confirm that a high-energy impact is consistent with the profile of a crash before the system will prepare to deploy, Blackmer said.

When anti-lock brake system sensors on the wheels indicate that the vehicle has come to rest, a gas generator will disperse a liquid fire suppressant. The liquid—"the same kind of stuff used in fire extinguishers"—is held in two tanks, one of 4.3 liters and the other 4.9 liters, Blackmer said.

When a crash is detected, a timer kicks in. It is a backup in case the impact disables the ABS sensing system and will deploy the fire suppressant after six seconds. There is also a manual backup if all else fails or if special conditions prevail.

Blackmer said that the option has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $2,500. The system must be installed at the factory and cannot be retrofitted onto police cars already in service.

An alternative fire-protection device, introduced about three years ago by a company called Fire Panel LLC, consists of a plastic panel full of a dry fire-suppression chemical. It was designed to cover the gas tanks of police cruisers already on the road.

The trigger of the system is the material of the casing, a proprietary blend of Noryl resins, worked out by Fire Panel and GE Advanced Materials, a unit of General Electric Co. in Pittsfield, Mass.

According to GE, the aim was a material that would be lightweight but would also resist chemicals and stand up to the impacts of normal vehicle use. It would also have to distribute the impact of a crash so the shell would shatter to disperse the powder fire-extinguishing material evenly.

Fire Panel, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., says that its product has been installed on more than 12,000 police cruisers. About 100 police departments have bought them.

According to Scott Starr, Fire Panel's marketing manager, the price varies with the volume of an order and typically is less than $400 each. The company is also pursuing race car and military applications for the panel, Starr said.

As wind turbines become larger and more efficient, utilities may want to start erecting them everywhere. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be) not every site is suitable for these behemoths. Most modern wind turbines can produce power economically only when the average wind speed exceeds 15.5 miles per hour.

Wind at 80 meters: One researcher says it blows hard enough to outrun the world's energy demand.

Meteorological records show there aren't too many places that fall into that category, but those wind readings are taken close to the surface. What about 20 or more stories up, where the turbines turn? Stanford University civil engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson has developed a means of extrapolating wind speeds at a height of 80 meters from surface weather records. Applying the method to more than 8,000 locations around the world, Jacobson has created a map of the global wind potential.

According to the calculations, only about 13 percent of locations have wind speeds high enough to make wind power profitable. Indeed, large swathes of Asia and South America have virtually no wind potential. But even as sparse as the resource is, Jacobson calculates that wind power generated at these high-speed areas could generate the energy equivalent of 54 billion tons of oil a year—or five times the world energy demand.

One of the most common treatments for a badly damaged spine is fusing together two or more vertebrae. That protects the spinal cord, but at the cost of limiting movement and creating the potential for future problems in surrounding areas of the spine.

What's needed, many biomedical engineers agree, is a new kind of medical implant that can duplicate many aspects of the spine's natural motion. Now, mechanical engineers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., have developed some new machines and software tools that will help speed such advanced back implants to the market.

At present, companies with spinal devices to test must use spines harvested from cadavers. Aside from being expensive—because cadavers are in limited supply, and a spine taken from one may be used just once—these spines are also less than perfect test platforms. They lack the network of muscles and ligaments that help stabilize the back in a living person.

The Purdue effort, led by Ben Hillberry, a professor of mechanical engineering, has created a computer model that can simulate the complex back motions of a person in everyday life. The finite element model his team developed not only can measure the stresses placed on the spine at any of thousands of points, but it also contains information about the physical properties of bone and tissue.

To ensure that the model accurately reflects conditions in a real spine, the Purdue researchers have taken data from harvested spines in hydraulic machines that recreate natural twisting and bending. One of the machines, in fact, is designed to replicate 10 years' worth of activity—some 10 million motions. Experiments conducted on sheep spines have agreed with the model; the team hopes to start work soon using human spines that will provide final validation.

When validated, the model will enable companies to design and test implants much faster, as small modifications to the device can be tested virtually—forgoing expensive and time-consuming work on cadaver spines. Already, one bioengineering company working with the Purdue researchers has used the model to speed development of a new device. Archus Orthopedics of Redmond, Wash., recently received approval to begin testing an implant designed to enable surgeons to perform some operations on the lumbar spine without having to fuse vertebrae to regain stability.

If this works as planned, spinal implants may become as successful and reliable as replacement knees. Some of the devices used on knees were developed using models Hillberry constructed back in the 1970s. "I was interested in doing that work because I figured when I was older, I might need new knees," Hillberry said, "and I wanted to make sure that they'd work."

A steel operation based in Mexico City has bought a U.S. producer on the rebound. The U.S company, Republic Engineered Products Inc., bills itself as the largest North American maker of special bar-quality steel. The Mexican company, Industrias CH, and its principal subsidiary, Grupo Simec of Guadalajara, together paid $229 million for Republic's stock and assumed debts over $160 million.

Perry Capital of New York had bought the assets of Republic out of bankruptcy in December 2003 and had restored the steel company to the point where it was planning an initial public stock offering. It was during the registration process that Industrias CH offered to buy Republic outright.

It is the third major acquisition for Industrias CH in four years. It bought Grupo Simec in 2001 and last year acquired the Mexican steel assets of a Spanish company, Corporacion Sidenor. Industrias CH has four electric furnace plants and four processing plants. It can turn out about 1.9 million tons of steel a year.

Republic, based in Fairlawn, Ohio, has plants in Ohio, New York, Indiana, and Ontario. It can produce about 2.3 million tons a year of special bar-quality steel, which is used in axles, drivetrains, suspensions, and other critical components of automobiles.

Surfware Inc. of Westlake Village, Calif., has released its Surfcam CAD/CAM Velocity system with TrueMill technology. That technology is a toolpath engine that manages the tool's engagement with the material to enable machining parameters.

In August, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., and Germanischer Lloyd of Hamburg, Germany, announced that two common American codes for estimating loads on turbines—FAST and ADAMS—were approved for use in Europe. In trials, the American codes performed as well as two widely accepted European design codes.

SuperPower Inc. of Latham, N.Y., achieved a record by running 100 amperes of electricity through a 676-foot length of superconducting wire. Later this year, the company plans to install a superconducting cable between two electrical substations in Albany, N.Y.

The Federal government has purchased eight portable X-ray screening vans from American Science and Engineering Inc. of Billerica, Mass. The vans are to be used to inspect vehicles passing by remote locations, such as border checkpoints.

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