External ballistics
External ballistics or exterior ballistics is the part of ballistics that deals with the behavior of a projectile in flight. The projectile may be powered or un-powered, guided or unguided, spin or fin stabilized, flying through an atmosphere or in the vacuum of space, but most certainly flying under the influence of a gravitational field.
Gun-launched projectiles may be unpowered, deriving all their velocity from the propellant's ignition until the projectile exits the gun barrel. However, exterior ballistics analysis also deals with the trajectories of rocket-assisted gun-launched projectiles and gun-launched rockets and rockets that acquire all their trajectory velocity from the interior ballistics of their on-board propulsion system, either a rocket motor or air-breathing engine, both during their boost phase and after motor burnout. External ballistics is also concerned with the free-flight of other projectiles, such as balls, arrows etc.
Forces acting on the projectile
When in flight, the main or major forces acting on the projectile are gravity, drag, and if present, wind; if in powered flight, thrust; and if guided, the forces imparted by the control surfaces.In small arms external ballistics applications, gravity imparts a downward acceleration on the projectile, causing it to drop from the line-of-sight. Drag, or the air resistance, decelerates the projectile with a force proportional to the square of the velocity. Wind makes the projectile deviate from its trajectory. During flight, gravity, drag, and wind have a major impact on the path of the projectile, and must be accounted for when predicting how the projectile will travel.
For medium to longer ranges and flight times, besides gravity, air resistance and wind, several intermediate or meso variables described in the external factors paragraph have to be taken into account for small arms. Meso variables can become significant for firearms users that have to deal with angled shot scenarios or extended ranges, but are seldom relevant at common hunting and target shooting distances.
For long to very long small arms target ranges and flight times, minor effects and forces such as the ones described in the long range factors paragraph become important and have to be taken into account. The practical effects of these minor variables are generally irrelevant for most firearms users, since normal group scatter at short and medium ranges prevails over the influence these effects exert on projectile trajectories.
At extremely long ranges, artillery must fire projectiles along trajectories that are not even approximately straight; they are closer to parabolic, although air resistance affects this. Extreme long range projectiles are subject to significant deflections, depending on circumstances, from the line toward the target; and all external factors and long range factors must be taken into account when aiming. In very large-calibre artillery cases, like the Paris Gun, very subtle effects that are not covered in this article can further refine aiming solutions.
In the case of ballistic missiles, the altitudes involved have a significant effect as well, with part of the flight taking place in a near-vacuum well above a rotating Earth, steadily moving the target from where it was at launch time.
Stabilizing non-spherical projectiles during flight
Two methods can be employed to stabilize non-spherical projectiles during flight:- Projectiles like arrows or arrow like sabots such as the M829 Armor-Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding Sabot achieve stability by forcing their center of pressure behind their center of mass with tail surfaces. The CP behind the CM condition yields stable projectile flight, meaning the projectile will not overturn during flight through the atmosphere due to aerodynamic forces.
- Projectiles like small arms bullets and artillery shells must deal with their CP being in front of their CM, which destabilizes these projectiles during flight. To stabilize such projectiles the projectile is spun around its longitudinal axis. The spinning mass creates gyroscopic forces that keep the bullet's length axis resistant to the destabilizing overturning torque of the CP being in front of the CM.
Main effects in external ballistics
Projectile/bullet drop and projectile path
The effect of gravity on a projectile in flight is often referred to as projectile drop or bullet drop. It is important to understand the effect of gravity when zeroing the sighting components of a gun. To plan for projectile drop and compensate properly, one must understand parabolically shaped trajectories.Projectile/bullet drop
In order for a projectile to impact any distant target, the barrel must be inclined to a positive elevation angle relative to the target. This is due to the fact that the projectile will begin to respond to the effects of gravity the instant it is free from the mechanical constraints of the bore. The imaginary line down the center axis of the bore and out to infinity is called the line of departure and is the line on which the projectile leaves the barrel. Due to the effects of gravity a projectile can never impact a target higher than the line of departure. When a positively inclined projectile travels downrange, it arcs below the line of departure as it is being deflected off its initial path by gravity. Projectile/Bullet drop is defined as the vertical distance of the projectile below the line of departure from the bore. Even when the line of departure is tilted upward or downward, projectile drop is still defined as the distance between the bullet and the line of departure at any point along the trajectory. Projectile drop does not describe the actual trajectory of the projectile. Knowledge of projectile drop however is useful when conducting a direct comparison of two different projectiles regarding the shape of their trajectories, comparing the effects of variables such as velocity and drag behavior.Projectile/bullet path
For hitting a distant target an appropriate positive elevation angle is required that is achieved by angling the line of sight from the shooter's eye through the centerline of the sighting system downward toward the line of departure. This can be accomplished by simply adjusting the sights down mechanically, or by securing the entire sighting system to a sloped mounting having a known downward slope, or by a combination of both. This procedure has the effect of elevating the muzzle when the barrel must be subsequently raised to align the sights with the target. A projectile leaving a muzzle at a given elevation angle follows a ballistic trajectory whose characteristics are dependent upon various factors such as muzzle velocity, gravity, and aerodynamic drag. This ballistic trajectory is referred to as the bullet path. If the projectile is spin stabilized, aerodynamic forces will also predictably arc the trajectory slightly to the right, if the rifling employs "right-hand twist." Some barrels are cut with left-hand twist, and the bullet will arc to the left, as a result. Therefore, to compensate for this path deviation, the sights also have to be adjusted left or right, respectively. A constant wind also predictably affects the bullet path, pushing it slightly left or right, and a little bit more up and down, depending on the wind direction. The magnitude of these deviations are also affected by whether the bullet is on the upward or downward slope of the trajectory, due to a phenomenon called "yaw of repose," where a spinning bullet tends to steadily and predictably align slightly off center from its point mass trajectory. Nevertheless, each of these trajectory perturbations are predictable once the projectile aerodynamic coefficients are established, through a combination of detailed analytical modeling and test range measurements.Projectile/bullet path analysis is of great use to shooters because it allows them to establish ballistic tables that will predict how much vertical elevation and horizontal deflection corrections must be applied to the sight line for shots at various known distances. The most detailed ballistic tables are developed for long range artillery and are based on six-degree-of-freedom trajectory analysis, which accounts for aerodynamic behavior along the three axial directions—elevation, range, and deflection—and the three rotational directions—pitch, yaw, and spin. For small arms applications, trajectory modeling can often be simplified to calculations involving only four of these degrees-of-freedom, lumping the effects of pitch, yaw and spin into the effect of a yaw-of-repose to account for trajectory deflection. Once detailed range tables are established, shooters can relatively quickly adjust sights based on the range to target, wind, air temperature and humidity, and other geometric considerations, such as terrain elevation differences.
Projectile path values are determined by both the sight height, or the distance of the line of sight above the bore centerline, and the range at which the sights are zeroed, which in turn determines the elevation angle. A projectile following a ballistic trajectory has both forward and vertical motion. Forward motion is slowed due to air resistance, and in point mass modeling the vertical motion is dependent on a combination of the elevation angle and gravity. Initially, the projectile is rising with respect to the line of sight or the horizontal sighting plane. The projectile eventually reaches its apex where the vertical speed component decays to zero under the effect of gravity, and then begins to descend, eventually impacting the earth. The farther the distance to the intended target, the greater the elevation angle and the higher the apex.
The projectile path crosses the horizontal sighting plane two times. The point closest to the gun occurs while the bullet is climbing through the line of sight and is called the near zero. The second point occurs as the projectile is descending through the line of sight. It is called the far zero and defines the current sight in distance for the gun. Projectile path is described numerically as distances above or below the horizontal sighting plane at various points along the trajectory. This is in contrast to projectile drop which is referenced to the plane containing the line of departure regardless of the elevation angle. Since each of these two parameters uses a different reference datum, significant confusion can result because even though a projectile is tracking well below the line of departure it can still be gaining actual and significant height with respect to the line of sight as well as the surface of the Earth in the case of a horizontal or near horizontal shot taken over flat terrain.