I need some rates and crap

[Trench]

I need some help on a few numbers here...

#1 How hard can the air hit the paintball before deforming it?

#2 How much air is needed and how fast must that air be traveling to hit the ball, not deform it, and make the ball accelerate the propper speeds

Any help on these would be awesome...

[backtrack2pb]

If the paintball deforms by much then it will become wedged in the barrel and shatter. Accecleration of a paintball from 0 fps to 290 fps in a 12'' barrel is about 16,000 g's. V^2= Vo^2 + 2AD where V= final velocity, Vo is equal to inital velocity, A is equal to the accecleration you are solving for and D is equal to the distance that the paintball has to travel while acceclerating. If you ask me, this is getting hit pretty hard by any standard. The question as to how fast the air must be traveling and how much has a lot to depend on expansion rates. IE, it would require more gas at lower tempratures because the gas expands slower. Sorry I didn't answer your question. This isn't simple math, go find a graduate student with a degree in fluid dynamics or the nearest third year AE major.