December 15 2009, 03:49:54 #747 [0 Agree] [0 S] [0 T]
a question to all you smart people, I'd like to know how to measure the force of a bullet striking a surface (I'm curious as to what strain armour is under at the point of impact)
is there a convenient kind of formula I could use to determine the force of various calibres?
Replies: 5
December 15 2009, 05:57:03 #749 [1 Agree] [0 S] [0 T]
the mass times velocity of the force of a bullet is going to be equal to the force the surface has to endure. but the force is going to have nothing to do with the strain on the armor at the time of impact. to analyze strain you need to look at force over time of a collision. to do this you will need to know the surface area of the point of the bullet, an the efficiency of the armor material to distribute the force across its surface. to do that you need to know what the armor is made out of, and some constants for that material.
long answer short, basically the only way to determine strain on a material for an impact is to figure out certain constants for a material that can only be determined experimentally. this experiment would be something you would actually have to perform or research without knowing the complex material science/engineering equations. it cannot be solved with pure physics except experimentally
December 16 2009, 00:50:31 #770 [0 Agree] [0 S] [0 T]
so just want to clarify (math is not my strong suit of late :P) what you said in the first part: if a bullet weighed say 15 grams, and hit at 400 ft per sec, then its 15 x 400 = gram weight of impact?
December 16 2009, 17:32:15 #774 [0 Agree] [0 S] [0 T]
yeah, pretty much. but you want to change your units to kilograms and meters per sec to get the force in terms of newtons which is kg*m/s