EXTERNAL BALLISTICS: PARAMETER ESTIMATION USING POD-RBF

Abstract

When studying the dynamics of a bullet’s trajectory, multiple variable effects can be measured to attain predictive depiction of the bullet’s behavior. Much of this data has been studied and tested with proven success of limited predictive value. The goal of this paper is to create a reliable model for estimating the trend of how the speed of the bullet affects the drag acting on the bullet and using that inferred data to gain a rough estimate of where the bullet will hit on a given target. The idea behind this is the application of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition and Radial Basis Function to gain a prediction with limited error of where the bullet will end. What was learned through this process is that this combined process does in fact predict the trend the bullet takes with little error and does this process at a fraction of the traditional predictive time.