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 specific answer as to rifles would be not without really, really overcomplicated things with active systems, since a projectile from a rifled barrel spins to add stabilization to intentionally minimize and directional forces on the bullet from impacting it’s trajectory.
If we step outside of spinning bullets from a rifle and interpret the question more along the lines of any projectile, there are plenty of options.
There’s the magnus effect that you see with BB guns, but that requires the projectile to be rotating on the axis perpendicular to it’s travel, like a baseball pitch. Any spherical shot from a smoothbore weapon has to deal with this, and it’s part of why muskets that used ball shot were so inaccurate and were quickly replaced with more cylindrical shot like the miniball and then rifled firearms.
The magnus effect is very, very difficult to utilize reliably, though, since you don’t have any spin stabilization so any tiny initial variance in the direction of forces will quickly get out of control and throw the projectile off course.
Then there’s things like actively guided artillery shells, like Excalibur, that deploy fins to generate lift for the purposes of control, and guide themselves on to their final target. These types of shells have to counteract the rifling the the artillery piece firing them by having a spinning base that engages the rifling instead of the rest of the shell, though.
Eventually, following this path of adding control surfaces and independent thrust, you just end up with things like glide bombs and missiles, where you are effectively making a small aircraft to deliver the payload instead of firing it from a gun.
And this is really why battleships were steadily phased out after WW2, and missile cells replaced massive gun batteries.
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