Frangible bullets disintegrating in flesh cause very serious wounds with persistent effects. Hunting bullets include a frangible core designed to disintegrate when a protective jacket is opened by softer tissue or fluid. Some may disintegrate upon striking bone. Some penetrate soft tissue similar to full metal jacket bullets. įrangible bullets striking animal targets create wounds similar to conventional bullets. Steel targets designed to withstand rifle ammunition may be damaged by bullet velocities over 2,700 feet (820 m) per second and lower velocity bullets may damage steel targets intended for pistol or rimfire ammunition. Target crystalline structure may be changed to increase target damage by subsequent bullets. Energy transfer at the point of impact may break brittle targets, and may temporarily soften and permanently deform malleable materials. Extent of damage increases with velocity of bullet impact. Hard targets may be damaged by frangible bullets. Frangible hollow-point bullets may penetrate clothing, drywall, and light sheet metal but often disintegrate upon striking glass. The jacket may ricochet, but should have reduced range without the weight of the frangible core. Bullets must resist disintegration during handling, loading, and firing to reliably hit the target so high-velocity loads may require a non-frangible jacket to protect a frangible core from disintegration prior to target impact. Energy available to initiate the disintegration mechanism is limited by the rate at which the target slows the bullet so bullets may pass through flexible, fragile or low-density materials without slowing the bullet enough to cause disintegration. Target characteristics are an important aspect of interaction with the bullet. Few firearms can propel bullets at sufficient velocity to cause reliable vaporization at the target, and air resistance causes bullet velocity to decrease with increasing distance from the firing point so frangible bullets typically rely upon other mechanisms for disintegration at lower velocities. With sufficient velocity, bullets may be vaporized upon impact. The mechanism of bullet disintegration varies with the energy transfer at the time of impact. Īlternative manufacturing techniques include heat treating or sintering powdered metals at temperatures below the melting point, or binding the powdered metal with an adhesive or polymer in an injection moulding. Mechanical interlocking and cold welding bond the metals together either pressed directly to shape, or into bar stock billets that can be swaged into projectiles, with or without jacketing. Powder metallurgy techniques fabricate bullets from mixtures of powdered metals (typically tin, copper, zinc, and/or tungsten) compressed at room temperature to produce a high-density material. 30 caliber (7.62 mm) bullets weighs 150 grains (9.7 g) but the lower density frangible core requires greater volume. The jacketed frangible bullet in the center is longer than the outer soft-point bullets with traditional lead cores. Manufacturing įrangible bullets may be lighter or longer than conventional bullets of the same caliber. Brittle frangible bullets may break during the self-loading cycle of semi-automatic firearms and those fired from revolvers often break as the bullet encounters the barrel forcing cone after leaving the cylinder. Attempting to crimp a brittle frangible bullet into the cartridge case may break the bullet. Brittle failure may occur at subsonic velocity. This mechanism has been used to minimize the tendency of malleable lead and copper bullets to ricochet from hard targets as large, cohesive particles. Most frangible bullets are subject to brittle failure upon striking a hard target. Small particles are slowed more rapidly by air resistance, and are less likely to cause injury or damage to persons and objects distant from the point of bullet impact. A sequence of photos showing a frangible bullet fracturing when subjected to high velocity strain wavesįrangible bullets are intended to disintegrate into tiny particles upon target impact to minimize their penetration of other objects.
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