Ballistics Calculator

Instructions
You may select pre-set cartridge/projectile and environmental characteristics for either Mars or Earth from the first section. After selecting the desired cartridge and location you must click "update" to set these values before clicking "graph". If characteristics for a different cartridge and/or environment are desired they should be entered manually in the appropriate section before clicking "graph". Note that weight is in kilograms. Be sure you convert to kg for accurate results.

Pre-set inputs

planet: projectile:

Initial conditions

height: m firing angle: rad muzzle velocity: m/s

Bullet Characteristics

diameter: m mass: kg coefficient of friction:

Environmental Conditions

gravity: m/s^2 air density: kg/m^3

display units:

About

Simple ballistics tragectory program. Uses the leapfrog algorithm to itteratively plot the projectile's trajectory given the specified initial conditions. Drag is calculated by Fdrag = 0.5 * air density * velocity^2 * Cdrag * Cross-sectional area. Cdrag is the user-defined coefficient of friction. Currently, the model does not account for supersonic drag, so in transonic regimes the plot may dissagree with real-world data. Even so, this calculator has demonstrated results very close if not identical to empirically verified data on Earth.



The graphs are produced by version 2.2 of jpgraph, an open-source php graphing library. It is released under the Q Public License (QPL).

Everything else © 2007-2008 Greg Sandstrom, Tyson Raggio, James Northcutt, John Kent