I just watched a quiet place: day 1 and realized the bus looked like school busses I usually found while watching american shows. Why are the rear tires of the bus designed too far to the center hence the bus looks unbalanced?
In: Engineering
Because the bus itself is unbalanced.
The vast majority of it is empty, padded space, but up front is a large engine, fuel tanks, and so on, so the bulk of the vehicle’s weight is up front.
By moving the rear axle forward, it helps reduce the turning radius of the bus to allow it to service more areas with tight turns, and reduces the bending moment on the frame, extending the service life. As school busses are by far the safest method for children to get to school, if you can service by having more busses in service or able to reach more children you are literally saving lives.
Having a shorter distance between axles is important, as it improves maneuverability: a school bus is often involved in routes where sharp turns and turning around in neighborhood cul-de-sacs are required.
They’re still well behind the buses center of gravity. All the heavy stuff on a school bus is in the front and/or low down on the chassis. Behind the wheels is mostly just empty space and sheet metal so it’s not heavy relatively speaking.
The turning radius depends on the wheelbase. If you want to have a big bus that can still turn relatively sharply, you want short wheelbase.
If the wheels were farther apart, the bus wouldn’t be able to make sharp turns. Unlike city busses and tractor trailers, school bus route often involve tight turns and small residential roads.
Plus, it makes it super bouncy in the back rows when they hit a bump. Kids love that. /j
When something like a school bus starts turning, the front wheels will go where they’re pointing, but the rear wheels act as a pivot point. If the wheels are all the way at the back of the bus, then it would be making very wide turns.
School busses in particular need a tighter turning radius than most other vehicles their size. A transport truck generally drives on major roads and highways between warehouses and stores. A school bus drives on residential streets, making lots of turns to cover a large area.
All of the supposed “technical” answer are wrong…..
Buses are built like that because the chassis is a common chassis found on millions of “mid sized” box and utility trucks. The wheelbase is the same. The wheel base is common because of economics as well as DOT rules that dictate the maximum size of a truck that can be driven without a CDL license (under some conditions).
Sure, convenient that the wheel base allows for shorter turn radius, etc. etc…. But that’s not the real reason. They stick a longer body on that chassis for school busses because it’s mainly a shell and even a fully loaded school bus is well under the axle capacity of the chassis.
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