An artillery shell with mass is shot from level ground with speed at an angle with respect to ground. The ambient downward gravitational acceleration is .
The shell experiences an air drag force with the following form:
In the above equation, is a constant, is the shell's speed, and is a unit-vector in the direction of the shell's velocity. Right before the shell hits the ground, what is the ratio of its kinetic energy to its kinetic energy at launch?
Details and Assumptions:
1)
All constants are in standard SI units
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
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The equations of motion read:
m [ x ¨ y ¨ ] = [ 0 − m g ] − α [ x ˙ x ˙ 2 + y ˙ 2 y ˙ x ˙ 2 + y ˙ 2 ]
This can be combined with the velocity vector to obtain a state-vector as follows. Let x 1 = x , x 2 = y , x 3 = x ˙ , x 4 = y ˙ . Then:
x ˙ 1 = x 3 x ˙ 2 = x 4 [ x ˙ 3 x ˙ 4 ] = [ 0 − g ] − m α [ x 3 x 3 2 + x 4 2 x 4 x 3 2 + x 4 2 ]
This implies:
⎣ ⎢ ⎢ ⎡ x ˙ 1 x ˙ 2 x ˙ 3 x ˙ 4 ⎦ ⎥ ⎥ ⎤ = ⎣ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎡ x 3 x 4 − m α ( x 3 x 3 2 + x 4 2 ) − g − m α ( x 4 x 3 2 + x 4 2 ) ⎦ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎤ ⟹ X ˙ = f ( X )
Initial Conditions:
X ( 0 ) = [ 0 0 v o cos θ v o sin θ ] T
The expression for kinetic energy is:
T = 2 1 [ x ˙ y ˙ ] [ m 0 0 m ] [ x ˙ y ˙ ]
From here, numerical integration does the job. Code attached below: