Determination of the center of pressure and dynamic stability for irregularly shaped bodies
Article history: Received 23 June 2017 Received in revised form 3 August 2017 Accepted 5 August 2017 Irregularly shaped rigid bodies, which move with high velocity through a resistive medium, take specific stable orientations during the motion. The paper shows physical models for estimation of the center of pressure for irregularly shaped bodies and for assessing the dynamic stability of such bodies. Using the developed physical models and the results of numerical simulations for the body of an irregular shape (a geometry similar to the fragments of high explosive projectile), a center of pressure and stability analysis was performed for the given body. It has been shown, based on rotation about one axis, that there is a zone of stability for the body in certain orientations, but to determine it more precisely it is necessary to continuously change two angles about two mutually perpendicular axes that perpendicular to the velocity vector of the center of mass. Generally, for each body, there is an orientation in which the body is in a stable zone (oscillation around the center of mass), but it is difficult to find that zone since one has to perform an extremely large number of numerical simulations for each body of a different shape.