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
I had a cheapo smoothbore airsoft gun and it would cause the pellets to have some lift during flight. The airsoft gun wasn’t rifled so there was no rotational spin, but it must have put some backspin on the pellets because the pellets would fly up in a pretty reliable pattern. It did allow the pellet to travel further, but it was horribly inaccurate. It would’ve been a better airsoft gun if the bullet just flew straight. The physics of a metal pointed bullet are quite a bit different from a light round airsoft pellet, but here’s a wikipedia article on the magnus effect that can provide some further info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect#
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.
Yes, but using fins and grooves to alter flight is only practically feasible with much larger ‘bullets’. I.e artillery shells with guidance technology can also be ‘guided’ to go farther.
Conceivably, you could design a bullet explicitly to go far. But this invariably involves reducing or outright removing the spin which gives it accuracy. There being no market for inaccurate bullets, you won’t find much primary research on this question.
I’m imagining a smooth bore rifle, but with completely horizontal grooves at the top of the barrel. A spherical projectile with dimples like a mini golf ball. The idea would be that the grooves in the top of the barrel would create back spin. I kinda want to see it now.
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