Exterior Ballistics

by Ian Wargo
Abstract:
This paper researches the science behind Exterior Ballistics using a mathematical approach. The
paper will take the reader through the ins and outs of ballistics and projectile motion. You will
see how the differential equations of bullet motion are derived and where the equations come
from. In addition to this there will be a section on the computations that need to be performed in
order to accurately model bullet flight. Included is also a theoretical analysis of forces acting on
a bullet throughout its flight.

Introduction:
The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the science of external ballistics. External
ballistics is a branch of dynamics that investigates the science behind non-powered projectile
flight. The emphasis of this paper will revolve around the calculation of bullet trajectories for
common firearms. This paper will delve into the physical forces that act on a bullet from the time
it exits the barrel to the time it hits the target. The final outcome of this project will hopefully be
a resource that could be utilized by both target shooters and hunters in order to better predict how
there bullets will fly and increase their success in the field. The format of this paper will be as
follows.
Analysis of Forces Acting on a Projectile
A Short Lesson in Kinematics
The Holy Grail of External Ballistics
Introduction of the Drag Force
Setup of Differential Equation
Computation using MatLab
Analysis and Application of Data
Other Possible Factors Investigated
Conclusion

Analysis of Forces Acting on a Projectile:

When broken apart into its simplest components the primary forces that act on a bullet after it
has left the barrel are gravity and air resistance. There are however many other forces that act
upon a bullet during its flight, but these forces only really come into play on a microscopic scale
or at extremely long ranges. These particular forces will be further analyzed later in the paper,
and even though they are real forces it will be assumed that their effect will be so small that they
can be neglected. The largest and most noticeable force that acts on a projectile is gravity.
Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which all objects with mass attract each other.1 On
earth gravity is a constant attractive force that pulls all objects toward the earths mass center.
Gravity acts on all particles exactly the same no matter their mass size or shape. On earth the

attractive force of gravity (g) is equal to 32.176 ft/s2; that is to say that an object falling near the
earths surface increases its velocity 32 ft every second. This is why when you throw a ball up it
always comes down. Although gravity is a very large force it is very easily accounted for because
it treats all particles the same. The next section will explain the mathematics behind gravity. The
other major force that will be analyzed in this paper is the effect of air resistance on a particle.
Air resistance is the result of collisions of the object's leading surface with air molecules. 2 The
magnitude to which air resistance actually affects an object is dependent upon many factors. These
precise factors will be expanded upon in a later section. Air resistance is unique in the fact that it only acts
on the leading surface of an object. Therefore if you drop a ball air will resist the motion of the ball in an
upward direction. However due to the fact that air resistance only acts upon the objects leading surface it
always opposes the motion of that object. Hence, if you throw a ball up it will resist the motion of the ball
in a downward direction until the ball begins to fall at which point the resistance switches direction. The
easiest way to think of air resistance is as a force that is always opposite to the velocity vector of that
object. This concept will play a major role later on.

A Short Lesson in Kinematics:

Conventions: Bullet flight will be modeled in three dimensions (x,y,z) the vertical component
will be the y direction, the downrange direction will be x, and the side to side drift will be z.
In order to understand bullet flight one must first start with kinematics; or the study of motion.
Kinematics allows us to mathematically prove how and why projectiles travel in the fashion that
they do. In order to fully understand how and why a bullet follows the trajectory that it does one
must first tackle the principles behind linear motion. First I will model the path of a bullet in one
dimension. In order to do this I will be making a few assumptions.
First, we will treat the bullet as a particle; that is to say a point that has mass but no
volume.
Second, we will say that the bullet is moving up and down in the y direction or
perpendicular to the earths surface.
Lastly, we will say there is no air resistance acting on the bullet.
In order to tackle this problem one must first consider Newton's Second law of motion.
Where the force F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object times its acceleration a. It
also needs to be shown that:

The next step is to look a Free Body Diagram of the particle:

The next case to investigate is two dimensional motion. In two dimensional motion we not only
have an acceleration due to gravity, we also have an initial velocity in the x direction. This initial
velocity will cause the object to travel away from the source as it falls. In this situation an
objects motion can be broken into two separate components, both z and x, and the analyzed
individually. This is done by taking the sum of the forces in both the x and z directions.

The Holy Grail of External Ballistics- The Standard Bullet:

The secret to unlocking the mystery of where a bullet will hit once it is fired is primarily a factor
of how much drag due to air is felt by the bullet. The drag force exerted on a bullet is a function
of five main factors including: air density, cross sectional area of the bullet, velocity of the
bullet, bullet geometry, and the speed of sound. Unfortunately there is no universal drag force
equation that you can input your variables into and get a magical number that tells you where
your bullet will hit at any range. The only way to determine these values is through
experimentation. If you were to repeatedly fire a bullet and observe where it hit at different
yardages you would eventually be able to derive a pretty good guess as to where the next bullet
might go. This guess would only be good if you fired the same bullet in the same gun at the
same location with similar atmospheric conditions. As noted above there are many factors
involved in calculating how much a bullet will drop and guess and check does not really cut it if
you need to make your first shot count. If you modified your approach described above and
made accurate measurements of atmospheric conditions as well as your elevation, then
conducted your test fires you could then mathematically calculate a predicted trajectory if you
went anywhere on the earth because atmospheric conditions can easily be compensated for.
However, your predictions would still only be good for that specific gun. Now, the average
person usually likes to know where their bullet will hit, but the average person is usually
unwilling to go through the process described above because it would take too long and they
stand the chance of error. If bullet manufactures performed tests like these on every bullet it
would be great because all you would have to do is account for a change in velocity and a change
in atmospheric conditions and you would be able to know where every shot would hit. This
process would take too long and be very costly, so in the late 1800s ballisticians introduced the
idea of a standard bullet. A standard bullet is bullet of a specific size, shape and weight. This
bullet would undergo rigorous testing in order to determine exactly how much drag acted on that
bullet when fired at different velocities and atmospheric conditions. The standard bullet for
which all modern small arms ballistics is modeled after was developed in 1965 by WinchesterWestern. The shape is similar to the bullet shown below.

The bullet was a flat based bullet that had a width of one caliber or 1 inch, a length of 3.28
calibers, an ogive or frontal radius of 2 calibers, and a weight of one pound. This bullet is what
the G1 drag function was calculated off of. There are many other G drag functions, which are
similar but the standard bullet has different geometry. The advantage of having a standard bullet
is that the extensive testing needed to calculate trajectories only had to be done to one bullet and
then every other bullet could just be related to the standard bullet. As a result of the tests
performed on the standard bullet, ballisticians derived what is known as Coefficient of Drag or
CD. The CD is a real number that relates the drag due to air resistance as a function of air
density, cross-sectional area, velocity and mass. Now all that is needed to be done is to link the
drag exerted on the standard bullet to the drag exerted on any bullet. This link is known as the
Ballistic Coefficient or BC. A BC is the ratio of velocity retardation felt by any particular bullet
to that of the larger standard bullet. BCs for standard hunting size bullets range from
approximately .2 to .8 and the larger the number the less drag is experienced by the bullet.
Although the concept of a ballistic coefficient may be complicated to understand it allows us to
calculate accurate trajectories without cumbersome experimentation. It should also be noted that
American bullet manufactures calculate BCs off of the standard G1 bullet so you can only use
the G1 function to calculate trajectories, if anything other than the G1 function is used trajectories
will be little more than a guess.

Introduction of the Drag Force:

Variables defined:

In order to understand the drag force exerted on a particular bullet, one must first understand
how the drag is exerted on the standard bullet. If you will recall that from the tests done on the
standard bullet it was determined that the drag force on a bullet is a function of air density, crosssectional area, velocity and the speed of sound. After analyzing the tests done on the standard
bullet it was determined that:

In order to calculate the mass density of air we divide by the force of gravity.

Giving us:

All quantities are considered to be at standard atmospheric conditions.

Now if you rearrange the equation so it reads:

The term defined in the square brackets is known as the G1 drag function:

So if you substitute the G1 function in the previous equation you are left with:

This equation is the equation for the actual drag force exerted on the standard bullet under
standard atmospheric conditions. Now we are ready to refer back to our equations of motion,
which are:

Now if we make the substitution of Fd back into our equations we get:

If you will notice that the mass of the bullet is 1 lb divided by g and that d=1 we can simplify to
get:

From here the next step is to produce a working model of the standard bullet under standard
atmospheric conditions. This was the most complicated part of this project because it involved
understanding the G1 drag function. As I stated earlier, even though the G1 drag function is
defined as a function, it is not really a function in the context that most people are used to
thinking about a function in. It is rather a series of coefficients that correspond to a velocity at
which the standard bullet is traveling at. Because of this fact, as your bullet slows down you need
to continually choose different coefficients throughout the flight of the bullet. This is a pain
because it requires an if then type of computer program. Because I am not a computer
programmer, and nor do I care to be, I came up with a way to circumvent this problem. Below is
a graph I generated using Microsoft Excel that shows the BC vs. velocity.

As you can see when the velocity of the standard bullet drops below mach 1 the data does some
pretty weird things. Ballisticians have tried to fit a mathematical model to this behavior for years;
however they have been unable to do so. After reading about this I decided it probably was not
worth my time to try to figure out and equation to fit this data. So I had to try something else. If
you will observe the data from about 1,700ft/s to 4,400ft/s you will see that the data looks
relatively linear in fashion. So I did something that would probably have ballisticians pulling
their hair out if they heard what I did. I decided to clip the data at the 1,700ft/s mark and only
consider the values form there forward.

This graph shows the result of doing so. By clipping the data like this I was able to fit a linear
regression to the data. By doing so I had created an actual G1 function that I could use instead of
having to become an expert in computer programming. However, it should be noted that by
doing so my results will only be valid for bullets traveling greater than 1,700ft/s.

Now that I have my equations of motion and my G1 function it is time to solve this system of
equations. However, it is impossible to derive a closed form solution to this system of equations,
therefore it requires numerical integration. This is where MatLab comes into play. MatLab is a
numerical solver and is perfect for solving my system of equations, but first I must write these
second order equations as a system of first order equations, as shown below:

Computation using MatLab:

After I had a system of first order equations I made an M-file in MatLab to perform these
calculations (See Appendix for M-files). With this M-file I was able to replicate the trajectories
of the standard bullet using a Runge-Kutta 4 numerical solving technique. Below is a graph of
the standard bullet fired at different velocities.
Trajectories of Standard Bullet at Different Initial Velocities

5000ft/s
4000ft/s
3000ft/s
2000ft/s
1000ft/s

-10

Drop in Feet

-20

-30

-40

-50

-60

1000

2000

3000
4000
Range in Feet

5000

6000

7000

The graph above gives a good visual representation of a bullet trajectory; however when you
consider usability, a graph does very little for the user. An output table of position vs. bullet drop
and bullet velocity would be more useful when afield. Below is a table produced by MatLab of
the position, drop, and velocity of the standard bullet fired at an initial velocity of 3,000ft/s.

Range in
Yards
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000

Drop in
Inches
-1.97
-8.07
-18.59
-33.82
-54.11
-79.81
-111.35
-149.1
-193.53
-245.18

Velocity in
feet/second
2902.19
2806.64
2713.28
2622.28
2533.37
2446.59
2361.81
2279.12
2198.41
2119.6

Now that we have a working model of the standard bullet we can easily create a model for any
bullet at standard atmospheric conditions by multiplying by the term (1/BC). By doing so our
differential equation becomes:

We can now investigate how a bullets BC affects its trajectory. Below is a graph of the standard
bullet, as well as bullets with various BCs fired at the same velocity:

Trajectories of Bullet's with Different BC's all fired at 3000ft/s

BC=1
BC=.8
BC=.6
BC=.4
BC=.2
Drop in Feet

-5

-10

-15

500

1000

1500
Range in Feet

2000

2500

3000

Below is a table produced by MatLab of the position, drop, and velocity of a bullet fired at an
initial velocity of 3,000ft/s with a BC of .6. You can compare this bullet with the standard bullet
and see that the standard bullet dropped 245in at 1,000yrds whereas the bullet with a .6 BC
dropped 295in in the same distance.

Range in
Drop in
Velocity in
Feet
Inches
feet/second
100
-2
2838.18
200
-8.32
2682.72
300
-19.48
2533.32
400
-36.05
2389.84
500
-58.72
2251.98
600
-88.26
2119.45
700
-125.54
1992.21
800
-171.58
1870
900
-227.6
1752.53
1000
-294.94
1639.73

The final scenario to investigate is when you have change in atmospheric conditions.
Atmospheric conditions depend on three variables: temperature, humidity, and altitude. All three
of these conditions affect the density of air thereby increasing or decreasing the drag felt by the
bullet. By accounting for air density we see that:

Even though there are three variables involved in calculating air density I have chosen to only
investigate the effects of a change in altitude. Below is a graph of the standard bullet fired at
different elevations with an initial velocity of 3,000ft/s:
Trajectories of Bullets Fired at Different Altitudes, All Fired at 3000ft/s

12000ft
8000ft
4000ft
Sea Level

-5

Drop in Feet

-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-35

500

1000

1500
2000
2500
Position in Feet

3000

3500

4000

Below is a table produced by MatLab of the position, drop, and velocity of a bullet fired with an
initial velocity of 3,000ft/s with at an elevation of 12,000ft. You can compare the trajectory of the
standard bullet fired at 12000ft with the same bullet fired at sea level and see that at sea level the
bullet experiences a 245in drop in 1,000yrds whereas when fired at 12,000ft it only drops 227in.
Range in
Drop in
Velocity in
Feet
Inches
feet/second
100
-1.96
2931.68
200
-7.96
2864.47
300
-18.2
2798.33

400
500
600
700
800
900
1000

-32.88
-52.2
-76.42
-105.75
-140.43
-180.77
-227.01

2733.31
2669.42
2606.52
2544.7
2483.94
2424.15
2365.37

As you can see there are many variable factors that go into calculating bullet trajectories, so it is
easy to see why MatLab is a valuable tool to use when performing these lengthy calculations.

Other Possible Factors Investigated:

While shooting in the field, there are other environmental factors that must be considered. One
such factor is wind. Wind is one of the most dynamic variables that a hunter or target shooter will
have to account for. The problem with wind is that it can come from any direction with any
magnitude, and change on a moments notice. Even though wind can be tough to account for it
can still be done. In order to analyze wind you must think of it as a vector. Wind has both a
magnitude and a direction, so it I can be resolved into its x, y, and z components. For now we
will not consider the y component, and we will define the x component as a headwind or tailwind
and the z component as a crosswind. A headwind or tailwind is the easiest to account for due to
the small effect that it has on bullet performance. If you consider that the drag force felt by a
bullet is calculated relative to the body through which it is traveling and not relative to the
ground then you can visualize the following. If you shoot a bullet with an initial velocity of
1,000ft/s relative to the ground and there is a 10mph headwind the velocity of the bullet relative
to the wind would be 1,000ft/s plus 10mph or 1,015fps. This means that you would have a drag
force acting on your bullet that would be equivalent to 1,015ft/s velocity; however the bullet
would still only be traveling 1,000ft/s relative to the ground. So, a headwind basically makes a
bullet take a little longer to cover a specified distance than if there were no wind. This will cause
a bullet to shoot slightly low, and conversely a tailwind will cause a bullet to shoot slightly high.
The next component of wind that needs to be analyzed is the z component, or a crosswind. If
unaccounted for a crosswind can have devastating effects on a shooter. Take for example a bullet
that is fired at 3,000ft/s and has a BC of .5, at 1,000yrds the bullet will experience an 82in drift.
If you do not consider this factor there is no way you can expect to hit the target. However, wind
effects a bullet differently than one might expect. I first thought that the wind would push the
bullet off course at the same velocity as the wind. But if this were the case the same bullet that
experienced an 82in drift would have drifted 259 in. You can see that a bullet actually resists the
force of wind to some extent. A bullets cross range deflection can be described by the equation.

Where:

In the equation the term X/Vo is quantified as the time of flight it would take the bullet to travel
in a vacuum. And when you subtract these two quantities it is called the lag time, or the extra
time it takes a bullet to travel a specified distance in the atmosphere as opposed to in a vacuum.
After you calculate your lag time you just multiply it by the velocity of wind to determine your
drift. The final component of wind that needs to be analyzed is wind in the y direction or vertical
winds. A vertical wind is a wind that blows up or down on a bullet, and is typically only
experienced in mountainous terrain where a shooter shoots across canyon. The result of a vertical
wind is almost exactly like that of a crosswind except the point of impact will be high or low as
compared to left or right.
The monkey wrench: Throughout this paper I have only discussed the concepts of motion in x, y,
and z directions. And when I referred to motion in three dimensions it was only translational
motion. If you make the assumption that an object only undergoes translational motion you are
saying that it has three translation degrees of freedom. Almost every small arms ballistic
calculator uses the three degrees of freedom (3DOF) assumption; however 3DOF is only an
assumption because there are also three rotational DOF. If you want to model bullet flight to an
even higher order of accuracy then the concept of 6DOF needs to be explored. The reason
rotational effects need to be analyzed is because nearly all small arms bullets are spin stabilized
during flight. Though these effects are almost unnoticeable at short ranges they do become
apparent at longer ranges (those past 300yrds). When a bullet initially leaves the barrel it is
imparted with a little wobble. A wobbly bullet is an odd concept but is understandable if you
think of it like this. Bullets are designed to rotate perfectly about their longitudinal axis that
passes through the center of mass. Though it is easy to imagine that there are slight imperfections
in the bullet as well as the barrel it is being fired from. These imperfections cause the bullet to
wobble, and this wobble is classified as ballistic yaw. The angle or magnitude of this yaw is
referred to as the yaw angle or the yaw of repose. The graphic below helps to visualize this
concept.

http://www.nennstiel-ruprecht.de/bullfly/fig24.htm

How the yaw of repose actually effects a bullet is quite complicated but can be explained. When
a bullet rotates it spins about its center of mass, and when aerodynamic forces are present on a
bullet too they act on what is called the center or pressure. These are two different points and can
be thought of as almost two centers of mass located a small distance apart. Now when a bullet
has no yaw of repose, these two positions align and life is good. However, when there is a tiny
yawing motion it creates what is known as the Magnus effect. Because of this effect you can
observe a bullet drift off to the side even in the absence of wind. This is due to the fact that there
is a separation in the center of mass and the center of pressure, and when a bullet experiences
yaw it makes the tip of the bullet point in a slightly different direction than the direction of travel.
This means that the side of the bullet is subjected to a wind force. This would not affect the
bullet were it not for the separation in the center of pressure and mass, but because of it the wind
creates a moment or a torque on the bullet. The torque on the bullet turns the bullet and makes it
almost skid thought the air hence a bullet can deviate even in the absence of wind. It can be
better thought of as the concept of how a pitcher is able to throw a curve ball. The Magnus effect
can also play another role over time if the center of pressure is located in front of the center of
mass. The Magnus effect will act as a destabilizing force and if it is to a large enough degree it
will cause the bullet to tumble. Conversely, if the center of pressure is located behind the center
of mass it will work to stabilize the bullet. The deflection due to this force is small but can be
noticed at longer ranges and in the magnitude of a few inches. Another interesting fact is that the
bullet deviation will be to the right on a rifle that has a right hand twist to the rifling and to the
left on a left had twist.

Conclusion:
When I began researching the topic of Exterior Ballistics I thought that I would easily understand
the subject because I had a lot of prior experience with shooting and reloading. I quickly realized
that my level of expertise in the area was slim to none. Though throughout the course of this
project it has opened my eyes to a whole new level of understanding of what actual happens after
you pull the trigger. I found this subject incredibly interesting and hopefully I have shed a little
light on common misconceptions about Exterior Ballistics as well as to give the reader a little
better understanding as to what physical forces are actually at play during flight. After
completing this project it has become very apparent to me that there is a lot that the common
shooter or outdoorsman takes for granted when it comes to shooting. I encourage anyone who is
into shooting and reloading to do their own research and take what I have done and go one step
further, this topic is fascinating to me and I know if you find this subject as interesting as me you
could keep yourself busy for a lifetime.

Appendix:
MatLab M-files used for computation.
1) function output=Finaloutput(b,alt,v)
%output bc=ballistic coefficient h=height v=velocity
%variables defined as global so they can be used in subroutines
global bc
global h
h=alt;
bc=b;
%rounds off answer
format bank
%rk4 used with .0001 step size for greater accuracy
[t,x]=rk4(@dragforce12,[0,3],[0;v;0;0],.0001);
Time=[];
%Routine used to find values every 100yrds
for K=1:10
Time=[Time,max(find(x(:,1)<K*300))];
end
output=[x(Time,1)/3,x(Time,3)*12,sqrt(x(Time,2).^2+x(Time,4).^2)];
%Out put graph of Bullte position
plot(x(:,1),x(:,3))

2) function Fdprime=dragforce12(t,x)
global bc
global h
g=32.176;
%Routine used to find trajectories as a function of elevation BC and
%gravity
Fdprime=zeros(4,1);
Fdprime(1)=x(2);
Fdprime(2)=((0.0000800703*sqrt(x(2)^2+x(4)^2)+0.0900104817)*airdensity2(h)*(1/bc)*x(2));
Fdprime(3)=x(4);
Fdprime(4)=((0.0000800703*sqrt(x(2)^2+x(4)^2)+0.0900104817)*airdensity2(h)*(1/bc)*x(4))-g;

3) function rho=airdensity2(height)

%Routine used to find air density at an altitude

rho=exp(-3.02149e-005*(height));

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/CLASS/newtlaws/u2l3e.html

http://www.nennstiel-rup recht.de/bullfly/index.htm
http://www.exteriorballistics.com/ebexplained/index.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_ballistics
http://www.handloads.com/calc/
http://www.shootingsoftware.com/coefficients.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajectory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/u31240468/AeroBallistics.pdf
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0126.shtml
Hatchers Notebook, By Julian S. Hatcher
A special thanks to:
Ted Almgren and all of the guys in the Ballistic Tech department at Sierra Bullet Co.
Don Hickethier