Author(s)

R. D. H. Warburton¹, J. Wang², J. Burgdörfer³

¹Department of Administrative Sciences, Metropolitan College, Boston University, Boston, USA.
²Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, USA.
³Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria.

We study projectile motion with air resistance quadratic in speed. We consider three regimes of approximation: low-angle trajectory where the horizontal velocity, u, is assumed to be much larger than the vertical velocity w; high-angle trajectory where ; and split-angle trajectory where . Closed form solutions for the range in the first regime are obtained in terms of the Lambert W function. The approximation is simple and accurate for low angle ballistics problems when compared to measured data. In addition, we find a surprising behavior that the range in this approximation is symmetric about , although the trajectories are asymmetric. We also give simple and practical formulas for accurate evaluations of the Lambert W function.

Projectile Motion, Air Resistance Quadratic

R. Warburton, J. Wang and J. Burgdörfer, "Analytic Approximations of Projectile Motion with Quadratic Air Resistance," Journal of Service Science and Management, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2010, pp. 98-105. doi: 10.4236/jssm.2010.31012.