Open AccessOn the drift of spinning projectiles
Author(s) -
J. W. Campbell
Publication year - 1924
Publication title -
proceedings of the royal society of london. series a, containing papers of a mathematical and physical character
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2053-9150
pISSN - 0950-1207
DOI - 10.1098/rspa.1924.0064
Subject(s) - projectile , tangent , range of a projectile , spinning , mechanics , plane (geometry) , ballistics , physics , ammunition , trajectory , classical mechanics , mathematics , engineering , mechanical engineering , geometry , materials science , metallurgy , quantum mechanics , astronomy
It is the purpose of this paper to discuss a particular case of the drift of spinning projectiles, viz., the case where the yaw and the inclination of the axis of the projectile to the plane of fire do not become too great. Having first encountered the phenomenon in a course in musketry, my interest has been most especially in the drift of rifle bullets, but the mechanical principles which produce drift are of course independent of the size of the projectile. Prof. A. Gray in his recent book on 'Gyrostatics’ says (p. 274) that “the main cause of drift and the general behaviour of the projectile are tolerably clear,” and refers to a paper by Mallock. In his paper Mallock proposes, as the cause of drift, the combined action of two forces on the projectile, one tending to tip the nose away from the trajectory in the plane of the tangent and the other due to the sliding friction of the air tending to turn the point at right angles to the plane of the tangent and the trajectory. These forces are equivalent to two couples producing gyration, together with forces through the centre of gravity tending to produce translation, the part of this translation which is normal to the plane of fire being called drift. The basis of the theory is only partly experimental, some of the details being difficult of verification.