By Jason Walker

Faculty Mentor: Emmanuel Skamangas

Abstract

Projectile motion is usually defined as the motion of an object fired or projected through the air without additional propulsive force.
In the ideal case of projectile motion, gravity is the only force acting upon the propelled object and air resistance is considered to be negligible. More realistic representations of projectile motion would include the force of drag on the object. In addition the effect of a lift surface can be modeled.
For this investigation the ideal case was solved analytically and modeled for comparison to projectile motion with more variables. The inclusion of drag and lift required the implementation of a numerical integration routine to solve the equations of motion. MATLAB was utilized for this work to help build a proficiency in coding using MATLAB while obtaining a more in depth understanding of complex projectile motion.