Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles High Sectional Density and Low Recoil Cartridges

Above is LB's go-to statement for all his posts. You know what I say, SD is mid-evil pumpkin heaving crap, hows that. SD has no bearing in bullet performance, it is only a characteristic of measurement, like 1-foot=12-inches, that's it. It has no definitive application to anything with regard to physics/ballistics. Physics would be the material engineering of the components in testing and assessing the toughness of a material or in this case the bullet for the maximum amount of stress it can take before fracturing. The durability of a bullet goes to its elasticity and plastcity within a design range, this in turn reveals design strength and toughness at a given impact velocity and its expansion characteristics. Obviously firms like Hornady (their ELD) and others do painstaking research to develop projectiles that combine a given weight retention, expansion, and penetration at numerous tested impact velocities. I can assure you they never think about SD when they are developing these projectiles. They are basing their research on only materials engineering and how these materials interact under extreme stress through mediums. The physics involved would be combining these variables and refining them to a gnats ass. SD is only a number rendered by a bullets dimensions, hence its weight and diameter. These days with advanced technologies and the use of fusing advanced materials, SD is meaningless when it comes to penetration. For shooting solids it doesn't much matter whether pushing a .308, 147gr FMJ or .416, 400gr FMJ both will penetrate like all get-out, thus proving its about the materials not projectiles SD.

Above is LB's go-to statement for all his posts. You know what I say, SD is mid-evil pumpkin heaving crap, hows that. SD has no bearing in bullet performance, it is only a characteristic of measurement, like 1-foot=12-inches, that's it. It has no definitive application to anything with regard to physics/ballistics. Physics would be the material engineering of the components in testing and assessing the toughness of a material or in this case the bullet for the maximum amount of stress it can take before fracturing. The durability of a bullet goes to its elasticity and plastcity within a design range, this in turn reveals design strength and toughness at a given impact velocity and its expansion characteristics. Obviously firms like Hornady (their ELD) and others do painstaking research to develop projectiles that combine a given weight retention, expansion, and penetration at numerous tested impact velocities. I can assure you they never think about SD when they are developing these projectiles. They are basing their research on only materials engineering and how these materials interact under extreme stress through mediums. The physics involved would be combining these variables and refining them to a gnats ass. SD is only a number rendered by a bullets dimensions, hence its weight and diameter. These days with advanced technologies and the use of fusing advanced materials, SD is meaningless when it comes to penetration. For shooting solids it doesn't much matter whether pushing a .308, 147gr FMJ or .416, 400gr FMJ both will penetrate like all get-out, thus proving its about the materials not projectiles SD.