ME2000 Project Projectile Motion

November 18, 2004

Goal: write a MATLAB program to model the eects of air (or other uid) resistance on projectile motion, and demonstrate those eects for dierent types of uids. Write a lab report detailing your numerical experiments, results, and conclusions, using Peers ABC Format 10 as a guide. Under what conditions would it be critical to include the eects of uid resistance, and under what conditions could it be neglected without sacricing accuracy in the solution? Simple projectile motion can be modeled as a body with constant acceleration in both the vertical and horizontal directions. In this case, the acceleration in the x direction would be 0, and the acceleration in the y direction would be g , where g is the value of gravitational acceleration (9.808 m/s2 on Earth at sea level). These relationships are derived from Newtons second law of dynamics, which for a body of constant mass is F = ma where F is the vector sum of all forces acting on the body, m is the bodys mass, and a is the vector acceleration of the body. Newtons second law can be broken up into a pair of equations, one for the x direction, and one for the y direction: Fx (t) = max (t) Fy (t) = may (t) where the Fx and ax variables represent forces and acceleration in the x direction, and Fy and ay represent forces and accelerations in the y direction. Using a model where uid resistance is neglected, there are no forces acting on the body during ight in the x direction, and the only force acting on the body during ight in the y direction is its own weight mg pulling it in the negative y direction. Therefore, ax = 0 and ay = g . These equations can then be integrated to nd equations for component velocities vx and vy , and integrated again to nd equations

for the horizontal position. All of these equations are taken as functions of the time t since projectile launch. Using a model where uid resistance is included, drag forces will counteract any motion of the body through the uid, in both the x or the y direction. The magnitude of this resistance in each direction scales with both the total velocity of the body, and the component velocity in the x or y direction. In this case, we still use Newtons second law relationship for each direction, but there are additional forces acting on the body that complicate matters. Fx (t) = max (t) Bv (t)vx (t) = max (t)

Fy (t) = may (t) g Bv (t)vy (t) = may (t) where B is a drag coecient that varies with the uid density, projectile geometry, 2 + v 2 is the overall velocity of the body in terms of and other factors, and v = vx y the x component and y component velocities. Notice that the forces acting on the body are functions of its velocity, and that its velocity is the integral of its acceleration. These equations can be solved analytically as ordinary dierential equations, but they can also be solved numerically with reasonable precision with the following algorithm: 1. Select initial values for the projectiles launch velocity and position. These values are for t = t0 = 0. 2. At the rst time step t = t1 = t, use the component and total velocities at t = t0 to calculate component accelerations at t = t1 . 3. To calculate velocity at t = t1 , assume a constant acceleration has occured since the previous time t = t0 , and that the component velocities at t = t1 dier from the component velocities at t = t0 by ax (t0 )t and ay (t0 )t, where ax (t0 ) and ay (t0 ) are the component velocities at time t = t0 . 4. To calculate position at t = t1 , assume a constant velocity has occured since the previous time t = t0 , and that both the x and y positions dier from the positions at t = t0 by vx (t0 )t and vy (t0 )t, respectively.

5. Repeat until t reaches a dened limit tmax , each time using the values for a and v at the previous time step to calculate the values for a and v at the current time step. Several values for B will be given later. For now, start working on a program to calculate positions, velocities, and accelerations of projectiles taking uid resistance into account.