basically I’m curious if it’s theoretically possible to add little channels or grooves into a bullet for air to flow through that would generate any amount of lift which would allow that bullet to travel further?
Just want to quickly add in really enjoying all of these responses where you guys are coming up with little “hacks”. Very fun reading all of these replies!
In: Mathematics
The barrel of a gun already spins a bullet as it’s fired. This provides increased stability and accuracy. Unfortunately this would also render any attempt to make it generate lift worthless since, while spinning, it would generate lift in all directions and it would just end up getting cancelled out.
And even if it didn’t, generating lift increases drag, so the bullet will slow down through the air faster. Its speed is why a bullet is deadly, so you’d be making a less effective bullet.
Not really as that would impact the spin imposed by the rifling in the barrel. Before a round is fired the casing and the bullet are smooth. The spin is caused by the grooves (rifling) inside the barrel. If you added grooves before that they would work against the rifling and stop the round from spinning.
Lift generats drag, and bullets spin. So you’d actually loose energy faster and better less accurate
Bullets spin for stability in flight. A non spinning bullet could do so, hypothetically, if you took care to the orientation during loading.
However, at basically every range the loss of accuracy from not spinning the bullet would far far outweighs any advantage of minor increased range.
If you need the bullet to go further, use a bullet intended to do. Meaning with more powder.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling)
As others mentioned rifles have grooves in the barrel cut into the bullet to impart spin…
However Shotguns are smooth barreled with larger diameter bullets (slugs) – folks shoot “rifled” slugs (bullets) to get some spin, otherwise I’d imagine it wouldn’t spin much and tumble more….if you were to cut out 2 channels it might do the lift thing, but be counteracted by the slug eventually tumbling…ooh maybe a slug that deploys “wings”…in both situations you would have to be sure the slug loaded perfectly in plane with how you wanted it to “fly upwards” to….
/end rambling…
Probably and no. Probably, you could add lift to a bullet. That sounds like a solvable engineering problem. As several other people have pointed out this interferes with rifling, but damn the current design, we’re trying to innovate!
No it would not increase the range of said bullet. Once the bullet leaves the barrel no more energy is being added to it, no useful forces are being applied. Your tiny wings would create an upward force, but it would do so at the cost of drag. In physics, you get nothing for nothing, so the energy to lift the bullet has to come from somewhere. That means the previous energy that largely was moving forward is now moving forward and up, fighting not only wind but now gravity.
Incidentally, bullets do have some upward momentum when they are fired. This makes them move in an arc, not a downward curving line.
That being said, you wouldn’t want the bullet to have additional lift. Think about it this way. If I’m at point A and I’m shooting at point B, my bullet needs to travel from me to B. What is better, if my bullet travels in a more or less straight line, or if my bullet travels in an arc? Your bullet would have to travel quite a bit further if you’re shooting in an arc. Moreover, you now need to accommodate for the arc when you are aiming. Like I said earlier this is already somewhat true, bullets do move in an upward arc and they also will drift in the direction of the spin. This arc would have you aiming somewhere in the dirt. You’d practically need a mount that could adjust in degrees to hit anything. Which is exactly what artillery does.
I’d love to see one of the gun youtubers try making a smooth-bore gun (so the bullet doesn’t spin) and special bullets with tiny spring loaded locking wings that pop out as the bullet comes out of the barrel. The bullet would need extra weight on the bottom to make sure the wings come out horizontal, and it would probably need a popup vertical stabiliser as well to stop it spinning. Now the bullet might initially be supersonic so you need wings that work in supersonic and subsonic regimes….and I’ve already wasted too much of my brain on this.
I only have a college generals understanding of physics, so take this with a grain of salt. But I imagine this *might* be possible while maintaining decent stability.
One way to generate lift is actually to spin in the direction you’re going. This is called the Magnus effect. It’s how balls are able to change directions midair when given a strong spin. A topspin will cause an object at speed to generate upwards lift.
If you had a cylindrical bullet, a specialized cartridge to fire it sideways, and a specialized muzzle with ridges along the bottom instead of rifling, that might give you a bullet with lift.
Spinning in any direction inherently stabilizes any object in motion, though I believe spinning in a direction skew of the direction of travel is much more stable than spinning in the same plan as the direction of travel. Specialized ends could maybe help with horizontal stability.
Such a bullet would also be much slower and have much lower penetrative power, and the firearm and ammunition would be more complicated, so I doubt it would have any practical use.
As others have said, not really. Although, interestingly, you can actually have deflections in the bullet’s trajectory as it spins through a crosswind because of how it rolls the wind around itself. So, is it conceivable you could switch between clockwise and counterclockwise rifled guns to achieve slightly more lift in different crosswinds? I guess, but it’s EXTREMELY negligible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect#In_external_ballistics
Lots of answers here but there is a way to have it work. Look up why golf balls have dimples. It adds lift. The trick is to get the rotation of the projectile correct.
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