The average pressure in an advanced combustion (with the fan and metering) reasonably close to the 1:1 ratio is about 30 psi.Moonbogg wrote:They have shot pneumatics and just judge what the PSI is likely to be from a combustion.
This makes it quite easy to work out an approximate ft-lb figure for any advanced combustion of about that sort of ratio - just multiply the barrel's volume in cubic inches by 2.5.
<SCIENCE>
Because Pressure * Area = Force, Force * Distance = Energy, and Area * Distance = Volume, therefore:
Pressure * Volume = Energy.
The reason it's 2.5, rather than 30, is because multiplying by 30 gives inch-lbs of energy, which needs to be divided by 12 to get ft-lbs.
</SCIENCE>
Obviously, this is just a rough figure, but it points out the fact that the end energy is a direct result of pressure (which is essentially fairly constant in a combustion) and barrel volume.
So basically, a combustion's muzzle energy is just a result of how big it is.
Pneumatics are more complex because they have a major choke point at the valve and wildly varying ratios which makes it much harder to apply a simple back of the envelope calculation to them, although I can usually guestimate these things these days.
An interesting thing came up when I was larking around one day. Although most spudders are aware that as projectile mass increases, pneumatic spudguns tend to be more efficent at putting energy into a projectile (in other words, heavier projectiles will tend have more energy than a light one if fired from the same launcher).
I started looking at M*V<sup>3</sup>, which is loosely proportional to the power (using the term power properly) required to do that - assuming a constant acceleration, which is obviously not the case, but meh. This falls with projectile mass - that is to say, heavier masses take less power in their acceleration (but this is applied for longer
Curiously, the result of the calculation for M*V<sup>2.5</sup> is pretty constant across wide mass ranges...
Unholy buggery, you have got to be kidding me. That did NOT just happen.
...I'm going to have to excuse myself to go and check this.
