ABSTRACT

The aeroballistics topics discussed so far have built up to where the reader has an appreciation for the techniques required to analyze projectile motion to a great degree of accuracy. The culmination of this study was the development of the equations for a six degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) model, which accurately describes the motion of a rigid body through air. With a 6-DOF model in hand, the aeroballistician can examine the effects of a given con‘guration. The word given was italicized for emphasis because the aeroballistician must know the con‘guration properties before he or she analyzes the projectile. The implications of this are that without other tools to determine what needs to be changed in a design to alter the projectile behavior, one must simply guess at a new con‘guration, determine the aerodynamic coef‘cients, and reanalyze. This process can be very inef‘- cient. The solution to this problem is to develop a theory that can be used to quickly determine what must be changed in a projectile to alter its ¤ight behavior, make the changes, and reassess. This will be the topic for the remainder of this section.