Acta chirurgica Scandinavica. Supplementum
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Acta Chir Scand Suppl · Jan 1979
Break-up behaviour of some small calibre projectiles when penetrating a dense medium.
A study of the break-up patterns of two types of standard ball small calibre bullets fired from a range of 100 meters against targets made of soft soap was performed. A flash X-ray set-up was used to study the behaviour of the bullets while penetrating the soap. ⋯ The longitudinal rotation velocity of the bullets is often so great that this is sufficient to cause-centrifugal stresses of high enough magnitude to cause rupture of the bullet lead core. This in combination with the high retardation forces acting on a bullet penetrating a dense medium at large angles of yaw is sufficient to cause an almost inevitable break-up for fast-tumbling bullets.