Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles [Hardcover]

Robert L. McCoy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2004

Modern Exterior Ballistics is a comprehensive text covering the basic free flight dynamics of symmetric projectiles. The book provides a historical perspective of early developments in the 19th century, the technology leading to World War I and that throu

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764307207
• ISBN-13: 978-0764307201
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #338,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Want to Keep This Book, August 14, 2002

By 

Mr. Roy B. Mccammon - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles (Hardcover)

Modern Exterior Ballistics
The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles.

I Want to Keep This Book. Thanks to the auspices of interlibrary loan, it's mine for three weeks. That's not enough. This book really has said everything there is to say about the subject, except for the classified data you would need to calculate trajectories of actual projectiles in the inventory.

Chap 1. A Brief History of Exterior Ballistics - nice shadowgrahs of near sonic and super sonic projectiles. Large drawings of several shell types showing how they are dimensioned.

Chap 2. Aerodynamic Forces and Moments Acting on Projectiles - you have to read this chapter if you are going to understand the symbols.

Chap 3. The Vacuum Trajectory-high school math with interesting examination of the effects of firing up hill or down hill.

Chap 4. Notes on Aerodynamic Drag - just what it says. There is a nice set of shadowgraphs showing a shell at successive mach numbers from sub sonic to transsonic to supersonic. Discussion of ogives, Meplats, burning tracer (provides a little thrust and more range), fins, and yaw.

Chap 5. The Flat-Fire Point Mass Trajectory-if you assume that the trajectory is fairly flat (such as with all small arms, rifles, and tank to tank combat), the effect of verticle motion on the down range motion can be neglected. Approximate the drag function by a simple (and useful) analytic function and you get some managable equations.

Chap 6. The Siacci Method for Flat-Fire Trajectories - More of the above, only the integrals are tabulated for several standard drag functions (about five pages for each drag function). Those tables plus pencil and paper and you too can calculate how far the 0.308 bullet travels and how fast it is going when it hits and at what angle it strikes.

Chap 7. The Effect of Wind on Flat-Fire Trajectories - head winds, tail winds, cross winds: pretty much what you would expect.

Chap 8. The Point-Mass Trajectory - the point mass doesn't yaw or pitch so we only have to worry about its three linear velocities. It only has to contend with the zero yaw drag function, air density, gravity and the Coriolis force. (These last three data sets are not classified). A 417 line basic program is included. With this you can calculate your rifle shots better than you can aim.

Chap 9. Six-Degrees-of-Freedom (6-DOF) and Modified Point-Mass Trajectories - The whole enchilada. Three linear velocities and three rotational velocities are considered. They are all coupled to each other by nonlinear functions, and the (ten or so) coefficients are functions of velocity and air density. Fascinating graphs of gyrating pitch and yaw of a 105mm projectile as it goes down range are included. Then come the modified point mass trajectories. This simplification reduces the degrees of freedom from six to four which allows some of the coefficients to be set to zero while still revealing considerable interesting behavior. The forth degree of freedom is angular velocity of the bullet along its long axis.

Chap 10. Linearized Pitching and Yawing Motion of Rotationally Symmetric Projectiles - ok, another simplification: assume that the pitching and yawing motions are small and linearize the functions. There is still a nasty differential equation, but you can (sort of) solve it and predict such things as the stability of the bullet as it goes down range without a numerical integration.

Chap 11. Linearized Swerving Motion of Rotationally Symmetric Projectiles - same idea as chapter 10, but applied to the position of the projectile's center of mass.

Chap 12. Lateral Throwoff and Aerodynamic Jump - what to do about unbalanced projectiles.

Chap 13. Nonlinear Aerodynamic Forces and Moments. - I don't know; I ran out of time.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb book, but LOTS of typos and missing info, April 2, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles (Hardcover)

This is ballistician's dream book. It describes all of the introductory and some advanced material pertaining to modern ballistics in wonderful detail, and the example problems are useful and illustrative. There is a wealth of information, such as drag coefficients and functions, form factors, and a beautiful derivation of the MPM yaw of repose that do not appear anywhere else in my experience. The experimental and computer generated plots are beautiful and informative.

Unfortunately, the book is also full of typographical and other errors, such as having the wrong variable in a place in several equations, having variables simply missing from equations or from an explanation in the text, having the wrong headings in some of the tables, repeating figure numbers on different figures, or even having multiple missing words in some explanatory paragraphs that make the sentences into hard to interpret giberish. Some of the citations,for instance in Chapter 9, do not appear in the Bibliography at all (Chapter 9 has references numbered up to 16 in the text, but only 10 appear in the Bibiolgraphy).

The bottom line: This is a GREAT BOOK if you are mathematically sound and don't mind deriving some of the equations yourself, and if you know enough to catch the errors and make the corrections. Don't get me wrong... I like the book a lot. It is well worth its price. Just be aware that you will have to work a little harder than usual to read and understand it.

[...]

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern Exterior Ballistics - not quite Modern, November 26, 2006

By 

Frank J. Regan (ellicott city, maryland USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles (Hardcover)

book Modern Exterior Ballistics was published in 2004. I am an active ballistician and find that this book is, well, to be generous dated, very dated. The mathematical formulation is overdrawn to the point of being incomprehensible in places. First, the use of the old i,j,k unit vectors is pretty much been overtaken by direcitonal cosine matrices and column matrix representations of a vector. Why not write your mathematical formulations so that they are readily adaptable to computer code formulation. Computer codes enter vectors as column matrices, not in a i,j,k unit vectors. On page 183 and following he gives a BASIC computer program. While BASIC has generally fallen unjustifiably into disuse and been supplanted by C++ and MATLAB with FORTRAN clinging on here and there. But the version of BASIC given by McCoy is just not used today (line numbers? whew). No serious ballistician would use the Sicacci method for flat fire Trajectories. Computer versions written in even a Student version of MATLAB to say nothing of a professoinal version or in C++ renders this method obsolete now and for all time. This book was published in 2004; these methods were obsolete before the book came out. The book is a complete mis-mash and while it might make sense to the author, it would be really confusing to a beginning aero-ballistician trying to learn the trade. Aside from that McCoy give the drag data for a Sierra 168 grain bullet along with the drag coefficient vs Mach no. Unless he gives me the muzzle velocity, I can't do the trajectory model. He then gives data. On page 182 he gives the drag coefficient of a 155 mm M107 projectile, but where is the weight and muzzle velocity? Look, to calculate a point mass trajectory you have to know three things: (a) muzzle velocity or initial speed, angle of lanunch and weight of the projectile. A drag vs. Mach No. is also necessary when there is a high subsonic to supersonic speed range. Other than that, everything else is environmental. With all the graphs, tables thrown around helter skelter cannot these three items be given for an adequate results. Just a sloppy job all around. A much better book, also available from Amazon is Ballistics: Theory and Design of Guns and Ammunition by D.E. Caalucci. One of the reviewers says McCoys book is some kind of treasure. Look at Calucci's book and you will change you mind.