Questions about the irrelevance of energy (ft-lbs)

[TaperPin]

Don’t forget lapping scope rings and refilling the bubble level with higher viscosity bubble fluid.

Since the 22 Hornet isn’t as fun now, I think the backup plan is to put together a fast twist 22 Savage Hi-power barrel for my old Remington. Brass is still available as 5.6x52R.



The original load from 1912 fired a 70 gr bullet at about 2,800 fps. It will be great fun to shoot alongside the 223 fans with a 113 year old Fudd cartridge.

 

[hereinaz]

Well, I am a former/recovering Fudd (thanks to RS) and I still have some Fuddish traits that will probably never go completely away. I love Fudds. They're good folks...at least the ones I know. And they always have plenty of venison stacked in the freezer and big bucks on the wall. Their old ways still work season after season even though many of their beliefs about "knockdown" power, energy, "bigger is better", etc. are completely outdated/untrue.

I agree...unlearning things that aren't true is really, really hard. But...trying to hold on to things that aren't true in the face of overwhelming logic, data, and real-world evidence is really hard also. This forum has a knack for dispensing with all the noise, BS, emotions, and nostalgia and it forces you to either "put up or shut up". Facts don't care about your feelings.

Truth

 

[hereinaz]

Since the 22 Hornet isn’t as fun now, I think the backup plan is to put together a fast twist 22 Savage Hi-power barrel for my old Remington. Brass is still available as 5.6x52R.

View attachment 848114

The original load from 1912 fired a 70 gr bullet at about 2,800 fps. It will be great fun to shoot alongside the 223 fans with a 113 year old Fudd cartridge.

View attachment 848110View attachment 848113

Might not be a tiger gun that can shoot through boiler plate, but my goal is to kill some deer and coyotes with my grandad’s Winchester lever gun in 25-20.

 

[eric1115]

So...

Energy is not irrelevant/meaningless to bullet performance and the work of destroying tissue.

Energy is irrelevant/meaningless as a metric for predicting bullet performance and tissue damage.

So...to just make the blanket over-statement that "energy is irrelevant/meaningless" without the qualifier of "for predicting bullet performance" is incorrect, misleading, etc. It is only irrelevant within the context of conversations about predicting bullet effectiveness, which is a very narrow/specific context.

I think making the blanket statement without the qualifier is where some folks (including me) get confused. And, as I stated before, using the overstatement that "energy is irrelevant" is not at all necessary for making the case for the effectiveness of small calibers.

But now I understand what you guys really mean when you say, "energy is irrelevant".

So, it's all good.

Thanks all!

It's not just that it's not predictive as a metric, it's not a major determining factor in the wound characteristics.

Bullet construction? Absolutely.
Impact velocity? Yes, for sure.
Bullet mass? To some extent, yes. Less than the other two for sure.

The amount of energy required to do the work of cutting/destroying 80-100 cubic inches of tissue is so small that virtually any centerfire cartridge can supply it.

Kinetic energy number is a by-product of all the other factors that determine terminal performance, not an actual factor.

What kind of performance does a 160 HP vehicle have?
That could be a face-melting liter class motorcycle, or a 12v Cummins with 500 ft lb torque, or a 350 TBI Suburban that is slower than a bicycle, or a Mazda Miata that will win a local autocross race. The HP number is in no way predictive or determining of the vehicle's performance characteristics.

If you yank the 160HP Cummins out of the 1-ton Dodge and drop in a 200HP motor out of a BMW S1000 motorcycle, have you increased performance?

Would that Miata have faster times around the autocross track with a 350 TBI that makes 20hp and 80 ft lb more but is double the weight?

The HP number, like the KE number, is meaningless both in terms of predicting, and in terms of determining, the performance that we're interested in. If anything, the HP number is a far more useful metric than KE, but I think it is still a useful analogy.

 

[Lou270]

It has been cover and shared from the research papers that hydrostatic shock does not travel past the wound cavity (temporary and permanent) nor does it follow the blood vessels to affect other areas.

Jay

“Hydrostatic shock, etc., as wounding mechanism is nonsense. It has been studied and tested repeatedly over the last 30-40 years and no evidence of it has ever shown up.

The “shock” that people think they get is the temporary stretch cavity.





No there is not. The very few scientists that try claim that there is, have been demonstrably proven wrong when the effects are measured in labs and tissue.





Yes- they are not wounding mechanisms, and there is no actual evidence in tissue for the effect at all. Despite the desire by seemingly everyone to the contrary- what bullets do in tissue and how they behave is not complicated nor “unknown”.

Shoot bullets into tissue, measure the wounds created. That’s it.

While I agree with Formidilosus that the vast
majority of what people think is hydrostatic shock is from stretch cavity in proximity to something tender there is research and papers on remote effects that clearly show wounding. For ex

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA526059.pdf

Some of the old science/rationale from the originals like Fackler who totally dismissed it were limited by technologies of the day. This is not fully understood and not something to count on though people are studying it. People dieing from things like non-lethal weapons and impacts on body armor seem to rekindle interest in pressure waves traveling through the body. But not something anybody can count on

Lou

 

[Formidilosus]

While I agree with Formidilosus that the vast
majority of what people think is hydrostatic shock is from stretch cavity in proximity to something tender there is research and papers on remote effects that clearly show wounding. For ex

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA526059.pdf

Some of the old science/rationale from the originals like Fackler who totally dismissed it were limited by technologies of the day. This is not fully understood and not something to count on though people are studying it. People dieing from things like non-lethal weapons and impacts on body armor seem to rekindle interest in pressure waves traveling through the body. But not something anybody can count on

Lou

Those are exactly the people I referred to. Their beliefs have been tried repeatedly and have proven to have no validity with medical research- it’s not been able to be shown or proven to exist. Far from it, there are a whole bunch of people running around that have been shot, that had none of these supposed effects.
Every time an entity has tried to do legitimate research to prove these effects in live tissue, they have failed.

 

[Skydog]

Those are exactly the people I referred to. Their beliefs have been tried repeatedly and have proven to have no validity with medical research- it’s not been able to be shown or proven to exist. Far from it, there are a whole bunch of people running around that have been shot, that had none of these supposed effects.
Every time an entity has tried to do legitimate research to prove these effects in live tissue, they have failed.

And even that paper concludes that fragmenting bullets that meet minimum penetration requirements would be needed to generate the high pressure waves. So, even if hydrostatic shock is a thing (not saying that it is) it doesn't really change anything...it seems that all roads lead to fragmenting bullets that reach the vitals.

 

[Macintosh]

And even that paper concludes that fragmenting bullets that meet minimum penetration requirements would be needed to generate the high pressure waves. So, even if hydrostatic shock is a thing (not saying that it is) it doesn't really change anything...it seems that all roads lead to fragmenting bullets that reach the vitals.

View attachment 848147

Remember that bungee I mentioned earlier, where I said that longer deceleration time is a cushion? Well, “transferring maximum energy in a (shorter) penetration distance” IS deceleration time. They are literally the same thing. Ie a “more efficient” APPLICATION of the available energy. Combined with the propagating effect of the bullet fragments on that temp stretch cavity (which is not even energy-dependent the same way), and you have yourself an extremely large hole relative to the available energy.