Reverse engineering the bow: a simple static model

Copyright by Ugo Bardi 2000 (revised Aug 2001)

This text uses a simple model, known sometimes as the Hickman model, to
calculate the relation of force vs. elongation (draw length) in bows. This relation is a
fundamentalone for the performance and the ease of shooting of a bow. The
calculations reported here are not meant to provide one with quantitative data, but
just to build up simple models to understanding how the elastic machine we call
"bow" works. We find that all bows (not including compounds) tend to have a nearly
linear relation of force vs. draw length. "Recurving" the bow changes this
characteristc in a favorable way which allows the bow to store more energy for the
same final draw force.

In the design of a bow, one of the most important characteristics to be controlled is

the relation of force versus draw length. This relation controls the amount of energy
which can be transmitted to the arrow and the possibility of smooth handling of the
bow. Modern compound bows optimize this relation by a complex system of pulleys
which ensure a minimum force at the maximum draw. We would like all bows to
behave as compound bows, but this is not possible. The best we can do for "non
compound" or traditional bows is to have a linear or nearly linear relation of force
and elongation in such a way to avoid the sudden rise in force at high draws,
something which is called "stack". When a bow goes "in stack" it becomes difficult
to control and it even risks to break. Clearly nobody wants that, but some stacking
may be unavoidable for short bows, as for instance for replicas of Indian or
Turkish bows.

The shape of the Force vs. draw length relation also determines the elastic energy
that can be stored in a bow. This energy can be seen graphically as the area under
the curve. Again, compound bows maximize this energy, whereas the curve of a
short bow is the most unfavorable one. These facts are rather well known in
archery, but the exact reasons for bows to behave the way they do are not so clear.
It appears that bows manufactured today, as well as ancient ones, have been
optimized by trial and error to arrive to shapes and dimensions which are optimal or
nearly optimal for the specific purposes for which they are (or were) built. There
remains the question of understanding why exactly some combinations of
parameters are better than others, something that we may classify as "reverse
engineering the bow". This is the question that we will be trying to solve here. In
another paper, we will examine the reverse engineering of the dynamic
characteritics of the bow, here we'll consider only the "static" part.

The mathematical description of the behavior of a cantilever bar under an applied

force is a very complex matter. For small deformations, however, the theory ends up
with some simple formulas. In this case the deformation turns out to be simply
proportional to the applied force. The deformation is also inversely proportional to
the Young modulus (or stiffness) and is mediated by such factors as the cross
sectional area of the beam and its momentum of inertia. In the case of bows, it is
hard to think that we may consider the deformation to be "small", so in practice it is
impossible to come out with a formula that would give us the Force vs. elongation
characteristics for the whole range of deformation. However, it is not impossible to
approximate the behavior of the bow as if it would be if it obeyed a simple linear
relation, and here I would like to do just that.

The idea of modeling a bow in this way was developed already in the 30s by
Hickman, so we can use what we can call the "Hickman model", shown in the figure
below. Actually the Hickman model describes an actual device, the torsion catapult
widely used in classic times.

We shall assume from now on that a rigid arm connected to a cylindrical elastic
element reasonably approximates the behavior of the flexible arm of a conventional
bow. This said, the mathematical model is reasonably easy to construct. We start
from a simple case assuming that the riser (the rigid part of the bow, where it is
handled) has zero length. Here are the main parameters involved

F: force at the arm tip, assumed proportional to the angle (it may be non zero at
=0)

Fx: force parallel to the x axis "drawing force"

X draw of the bow (length from the arrow notch to the arrow rest, note that there is
an Xo due to the stringing of the bow, so the effective length is X-Xo
La : length of the bow arm (the bow is assumed to be symmetrical, we consider only
half of it

Lb Length of bow string (half of it, obviously)

The meaning of the angle symbols is self explanatory

Now, as we see from the figure, there exist an elastic force on the point . In order
for the system to be in equilibrium the force of the archers pull transmitted through
the string at the same point must match it exactly. The component of the force
parallel to the bow arm has no effect since we assume the arm to be completely
rigid.

Now, the force Fs, is simply obtained at point by the combination of the X and Y
components (the Y component of the force comes from the other side of the bow,
not considered here)

So , the equation we have at this point is:

It is now a question of finding a relation among ,and. This takes some work for the
general, "strung" bow and we start first with the simplest case, that of a bow which
is not strung at all, that is it has a zero bracing height.
Simple "zero bracing height" bow

In this case we have that = 2 and = 90 ;. It follows that:

Plotting Fx as a function of is not so greatly interesting, we rather want to plot it as

a function of the elongation, X. Still in the simple case of the "unstrung" bow,
(Lb=Ls) we have that

It is possible, but not so practical, to express Fx as an analytical function of x, but

we can easily plot the two parameters for stepping values of . We assume both k
and L = 1. Well also limit the X range to a value typical of most bows, that is we
assume that the ratio of bow length to draw length is 2.5. This plot is obtained in
this case for = 23 degrees.

We see that in these conditions the F vs. X relation is approximately linear. But no
real bow is used unstrung, so this is just a test to see what our model can do.

Braced and recurved bows.

We want now to work with a more realistic model, one that starts "braced", as all
bows do. In this case, the calculation is not so simple, but it can be done with a bit
of work. We start from the equation we had found at the beginning:
From here on the problem is to express and as a function of . We have that

from the above:

And finally:

In this expression F is shown as as a function of , but easily transformed as a

function of since it is = 90 , just change sines into cosines and the reverse
As before, we can now find an expression for X as a function of (or ). Here we must
not forget that the elongation is measured starting from an Xo which it the distance
of the notch point from the arrow rest point.

As before, we can plot F vs X by stepping the values of (or of). Here are the results
for the same "realistic" values of the bow and stringing from zero to 20 degrees in
steps of 4 degrees.

We see that increasing pre-stresses make the F vs. X relation non-linear. We can
compare this result with the experimental data. This result agrees very well with the
data for real bows, which do show a somewhat "concave" F vs X curve.

It is also clear that bracing the bow has reduced the amount of energy that can be
stored in the bow in comparison to an unstrung bow. So why would anyone want to
do it? This is a very complex matter and something that cannot be explained by a
static calculation but requires a dynamic model of the shooting action. Lets just say
here that bracing the bow does reduce the energy available but makes the bow
more efficient in transferring it to the arrow. In practice there is a trade-off of energy
available and efficiency and the optimal degree of stringing is normally found by
trial and error.

We can also play with the model to see what is the effect of "reversing" the bow, to
make what is normally called a "recurved" bow as opposed to a straight or "long"
bow. In an unbraced recurved bows the arms are bent in the opposite direction as
that of the string. For the model we assume that the elastic force is not equal to
zero for =0, but to a certain "residual" value. That is F = k( +o), with o the angle
(negative) at which the bow arm is at rest. We can make a calculation for
progressively higher values of this residual and the results are shown in the figure
here. Here the stringing angle is 5 degrees and the "recurving" angle goes from zero
to 20 degrees in steps of 4 degrees. Notice that the force is normalized, for
increasing recurved bows we have to lower the leastic consatnt of the bow (k) in
order to arrive to the same final value of F. It is a well know fact that the arms
recurve bows must be more pliant than those of longbows for the same final force.
We see anyway that the effect of recurving the bow is to substantially increase the
amount of energy stored. This is what makes recurved bows superior to simple
"straight" bows.

Finally, we can use the model to see what is the effect of a large elongation. Here
are the results of a calculation with the same parameters as the previous one but
where the bow arms are supposed to be pulled all the way to an angle of 60
degrees (which would be impossible in a real bow, the arms would break much
before reaching that value)

Here, the model does not pretend to be a simulation of anything like a real bow
since the mechanisms of deformation are much different for a cantilever bar (the
case of a real bow) and for a rigid bar/torsion spring as we are considering here.
Nevertheless we see that the results obtained seem to fit with reality, with the
system noticeably going "stack" for x larger than about 1. Remembering that we
have so far assumed the length of the arm to be unity, it means that the system can
maintain a reasonable linear character for arrow of about length as that of the
bow, which makes sense if compared with the data for real bows. For even larger
values of and correspondingly larger draw length, the curve becomes even more
steep, as expected.

Risers.

The models described above are not very difficult to modify in order to take into
account the presence of a rigid riser that holds the two flexible arms. However, the
formulas become somewhat complex, so the results of the calculations are not
reported here. It will suffice to say that as easily imagined a riser has a negative
effect in forcing the arms to deform more than they would if the riser was not there.
A bow with a rigid riser goes in stack for smaller deformations than a bow without a
riser. Nevertheless, some kind of riser is necessary to get a firm hold of the bow and
to provide a stable base for such things as stabilizers, sights, etc. Obviously, it
should be as short as possible. It may be possible, however, that shortening the
arms some gain in stability is obtained because of less vibration, again something
that cannot be discussed within a static model

Conclusion:

The very simple model considered here (Hickman's model) can explain most of the
characteristics of modern and ancient bows. In particular we have been able to
"deconstruct" the bow parameters and to arrive to some conclusions as:

Bows are built with limited elongations (draw) to avoid a region for X/L (draw/bow
length) larger than about 0.5 where the bow goes "in stack", that is the force starts
rising up rapidly. Obviously, real bows may break even before reaching this region
which is considered dangerous by all bow makers.

In the region of X/L<0.4 the F vs draw characteristic curve of the bow is nearly
linear "by nature", no special trick of the bow-maker is necessary to obtain it.
Different values of the bracing height affect very little this characteristic.

Bracing the bow reduces the amount of energy that can be stored as elastic energy
of the arms, and as consequence the amount that can be transferred in principle
to the arrow. Bracing has therefore a negative effect on this point. It is nevertheless
absolutely necessary in bows since it affects the efficiency with which the energy
can actually be transferred to the arrow

"Recurving" the bow, that is giving a negative curvature to the arms is the most
important static factor that affects the bow performance in increasing the amount of
storable energy and giving rise to a slow-rising characteristic curve which makes the
bow smoother to handle. A good bow should be as recurved as possible, but there
are of course limits to this in reason of the limited resistance of materials

Risers affect the force vs. elongation curve in an unfavorable way and should be
made as short as possible.

http://www.surfchem.unifi.it/solid/bardi/archery/modelingbows/

Reverse engineering the bow: a simple dynamic model

by Ugo Bardi 2001

Universit di Firenze, Italy

Abstract. This paper is the second one by the author dedicated to simple models for
the physical description of bows. The first paper "a simple static model", dealt with
the force vs. draw length curve by means of an approximation describing the bow
as a rigid arm moved by a torsion spring (Hickman's model). In the present paper,
the same model is used to develop a treatment which describes the motion of the
arrow. This calculation is not meant to be a quantitative description of a real bow,
but as a simple exercise in modeling designed to help us to understand the physics
of bows.

Introduction

For many thousands of years, humans have used their intuition to build bows which
were effective and also beautiful. Over that span of time, our brains may have
evolved at least a little - in such a way to be especially fit to "model" the behavior
of such a complex system as an arrow shot by a bow. Of course, after so many
thousands of years we have also developed mathematical methods which we can
use for the same purpose. Still, the mathematical description of the behavior of a
bow is a very complex matter. Here, what I'll be trying to do is use a mathematical
model which is still simple enough that we can manage it easily and that we can
use as a supplement to our well trained (but limited) mental modeling. The model
was developed first by Hickman and others in 1930 and still today known as
"Hickman's model". In another paper ("a simple static model") I have shown the
results of the model in approximating the static behavior of a bow. Here we'll do the
same for a dynamical simulation, that is one which describes the motion of the
arrow. Here, as in the previous work, I am not trying to get quantitative results; for
an elaboration of the model to take into account other factors you can see the
excellent article by Tuyn and Koot published in 1992 on the European Journal of
Phisics and available on the internet. What I am doing here is just to try to get a
"mind sized" grasp (to use a term coined by Seymour Papert) of the behavior of a
bow as an example of how the combination of human intuition and simple physical
models can be used to optimize a technological system.

Onager models

Let's see first of all, as an exercise, how we can model a machine much simpler than
a bow: a torsion catapult. One of the simplest models, the classic "spoon" catapult,
was the one called "onager" by the Romans and "monankon" by the Greeks. The
first term refers to the kickback of the machine which evidently reminded to the
users that of a kicking onager, the other has its root in the Greek word for "single"
(monos) which obviously refers to the single arm. The Romans seem to have been
much more intensive users of these machines throughout the classical period, so
we'll call them simply onagers here. They were also used for much of the span of
the middle ages, until they were ousted by gunpowder, as all those machines which
were called "torsion artillery". Here is a picture of an onager (a 19th century
replica):

Onagers are real world machines which are very well described by a simple model
which was developed in the 30s by Hickman to describe bows. Here it is:

The force acting on the arm is that of a torsion spring which at the time was made
by twisting such things as sinews, but also human hair or whatever suitable
material came at hand. We can assume that the force generated by the spring is
linearly proportional to the torsion angle and it is was applied at a point at a
distance r0 from the center of rotation of the arm. Note that most ancient onagers
had a secondary bow midway of the arm. It seems that the purpose of this
secondary bow was mainly to stabilize the arm and to make it go straight, the force
associated with it was much weaker than that of the torsion spring, so that here
we'll consider only the latter.

Now, the purpose of an onager catapult, as of any piece of artillery, is to shoot a

projectile at the highest possible speed. In making a mathematical model, we want
to know what are the factors which maximize this speed. Intuition does tell us that
the stronger the spring the faster the speed, but other factors are not so simple to
modelize in "mind sized" bits: for instance how long should be the arm?

As a first approach, what we would need to do is to solve the motion equation of the
system. For a rotating system as this one, we have a simple differential equation:

As we know, is the torque and is defined here as a force times the radius r0. In turn,
the force is defined as a constant K times the angle that we write as , so . I is the
momentum of inertia, defined as: . Here, I is easy to calculate and is simply the
sum of the momentum for the projectile (mr2) and for the arm, which can be shown
to be proportional to Mr2, with the proportionality coefficient depending on the
shape of the arm.Considering a cylindrical arm of constant section, the coefficient is
c=1/3. It is smaller for a "tapered" arm, i.e. one which gets smaller towards the end.
For a triangular or conical arm it turns out to be c =1/6

The formula above is a differential equation which is rather easy to solve, we all
know that its solutions are sinusoidal functions, for instance in the simple case in
which qe=0 we have as a solution for the angular velocity

Another way to consider the system is to work on the conservation of the energy of
the system. We assume that the system is elastic, i.e. fully conservative and that all
the mechanical energy released by the spring is transformed in the kinetic energy
of the arm and of the projectile. The energy of the spring is given as a force that
moves its point of application along a circle of radius r0, therefore (inglobating the
constant radius in the spring constant K):

If we assume that the mass of the arm is negligible with respect of that of the
projectile (m>>M), we have an especially simple case. Since the energy must be
conserved, as the arm is released, at any moment, the sum of the elastic energy
and of the kinetic energy must be a constant

For q = qmax the arm is at rest, and so the kinetic energy is zero, , so we have that
.

For the more general case, with a non negligible mass of the arm, we can use the
formula for the rotational energy with . Since I is proportional to r2, then the result
is simply the following, with c the constant for the arm shape, and v the speed at
the arm tip.

or:

And we see that, as it is obvious, the speed of the projectile is proportional to such
things as the square root of the spring constant, whereas it is inversely proportional
to the mass of the projectile itself, again as you would expect. Less obvious it is that
the speed does not depend on the arm length. It would seem therefore that the best
onager catapult should have a very short arm. This may be true, but only within
specific limits. Here the limit lies in the performance of the torsion spring. If we
make the arm very short, the spring must accellerate at a speed that gets close to
that of the projectile itself. This is not possible since the spring itself has a mass and
plenty of internal anelastic stresses which would dissipate a lot of energy. In
practice, the optimal length of the arm is a compromise between these factors, a
compromise that could only be found by trial and error by catapult builders.

Notice that the formula that we found gives an expression for v as a function of the
angle, but not as a function of time, which is what we would have found if we had
solved the motion equation. The two expressions are anyway equivalent, as you
may verify by substituting the result for the simple case of qe =0, We can also use
the formula to find the accelleration of the system, something that we can do by
derivating the equation for the speed with respect to time. For simplicity, we'll do it
for the special case of qe =0 and M<<m.

We find that the maximum accelleration in an onager catapult is for q=qmax, that is
at the start of the action. This is an expected result, and from here we could go on
finding other relations. However, the onager is really not such an interesting
system, and the procedure we have developed will turn out to be useful for the
more complex case of the hand held bow.

Modeling the bow

Under several respects a bow is similar to an onager catapult, even though, of

course, the bow has two limbs instead of a single arm. What does make a big
difference is the presence of the string which produces a very different geometry
which causes almost all the elaestic energy available to be transferred to the arrow.
Bows are very efficient machines and the only reason why sometimes things like
onagers were used is that they were simpler to build. Bows use cantilever beams as
elastic elements rather than torsion springs as onagers. The mathematical
description of a cantilever spring is much more complex than that of a torsion
spring/rigid arm system. However, already in the 30's Hickman had shown that the
behavior of a bow could be approximated with a simple model (Hickman's model)
that assumes that the bow limbs are rigid and operated by torsion springs. In
practice, what we are doing is to consider the bow as something like a double
onager (actually in ancient times there were bow-like machines operated by torsion
springs, these were the most commonly used catapults). So, let's make a geometric
bow model based on this approximation.

Notice that the model shown here has no "riser", i.e. nothing of the rigid part to
which the bow limbs are attached. The effect of limbs can be included in the
calculations with reasonable ease, but the formulas become considerably more
complex and for the purposes we are interested in the results of the calculations do
not change much. So in the following we'll always consider bows with "zero length"
risers. As I said earlier on, the idea is to keep things as simple as possible.

Now, we could calculate forces and write a differential equation. However, as we did
for the onager, we'll take a road based on the conservation of the energy. Just as for
the onager, the energies must be conserved in a bow according to :

where the symbols are as before, but here m is the mass of the arrow and M the
mass of the limbs. We consider the mass of the string as negligible. Notice also that
the string is supposed to be infinitely rigid, something that will turn out to be a poor
approximation later on. So, first of all we want to find a relation between v and w,
which takes some geometrical work.

From all this we have:

taking into account that we can also write

We can now derivate with respect to time to obtain a relation between the angular
and the linear velocity (the speed of the arrow):

or:

Now, we can get back to the formula for the conservation of the energy and
substituting we get

and, finally:
These formulas look rather complicated, but they are not terribly so. Note,
incidentally, that if m = 0 (no arrow) the equation for w reduces to the same
formula found for the onager. In such case, the limbs accellerate freely until the
maximum q is reached. In the onager, the arm is stopped by the arm rest in the bow
by the string. In both cases the kinetic energy of the arm (limbs) must go
somewhere and it appears as the "kick" of the onager or by an equivalent "kick"
that may break down a bow shot without an arrow (or with too light an arrow)

Now, what we are interested in is how the speed of the arm (w) and that of the
arrow (v) vary as a function of the arrow movement along the x axis. To do that we
should explicit q as a function of x and substitute, but this procedure leads to very
cumbersome formulas. What we can do instead is to use a simple program to
calculate a series of values for x, v and w from the formulas above. We can then
plot v and w as a function of the x vector. We can also calculate the accelerations
using the same method described before for the onager catapult.

We can go on and make the calculation, of course we need parameters. We are not
trying to make anything exactly quantitative, but we may as well use values taken
from actual bow, to remain within the right order of magnitude. So, in the MKS
system, we can set r = 1m, M= 1 Kg (mass of the limbs) and for m (mass of the
arrow) we are in a range from approximately 10 g to 40 g). Regarding K, it has the
dimension of an energy divided by an angle. We can calculate it from the formula:
assuming that E is the elastic energy stored in the drawn bow, we can take it as
approximately 100 J. Assuming that the bow is fully drawn for q= 0.5 radians and
for the sake of simplicity qe=0, we have K= 200. For c, we use 1/6 as we discussed
before.

If we just plug in these values for a 25 g arrow, a bracing height of 15 cm and a

"draw" equal to the limb length (a bit optimistic, a normal value is around 0.9), we
get a final arrow speed of ca 55 m/sec, which is a very reasonable value. This shows
that the calculation does reproduce more or less the operation of a real bow. And
here is a plot of the calculation

This is a very fundamental plot. It shows how the tip velocity goes through a
maximum along the bow movement, and then goes to zero rather smoothly. From
the figure you can see that the ratio of the arrow speed to the tip speed goes to
infinity as the arrow gets close to leaving the string. This ratio is often called t (tau)
and this behavior is called the "tau effect". Notice how efficient is the bow in
comparison to the less refined onager. In an onager, the speed of the projectile is
the same as that of the arm. In the bow, the tau effect causes the speed of the
arrow to be several times faster than that of the tip of the limb. Of course, we do
not get something out of nothing, what we do is to trade mass for speed
maintaining the energy fixed. Unlike the onager, the bow is optimized for shooting
light projectiles at high speed, which is very good for instance for hunting. If you
want to throw big stones at your enemies in a war situation you are probably better
off with an onager type catapult, but you can't use it to hunt!.

For a better understanding of what goes on during shooting, we can now plot the
accelerations of tip and arrow for the same case as above, obtained using the same
method we used fot the onager. Here are the results:

We see how the tip accellerates first then starts deceleating about midway, while it
transfers kinetic energy to the arrow. The arrow has a positive accelleration during
the whole trajectory within the shooting action, until the end point, when it leaves
the string

Now that we have a working model, we can use it to see how the effect of the
various parameters. Of these, some are rather obvious. For instance the spring
constant (i.e. the "weight" of the bow) and the "recurving" effect have both the
same effect in increasing the final speed of the arrow, but change very little the
shape of the curves above. The advantage of recurving is best understood in terms
of a static model. Other parameters have a less obvious effect and deserve a
specific discussion

Arrow weight

The arrow weight is one of the major preoccupations of archers. Let's see its effect,
here we change the mass of the arrow from a light 5 grams one to a heavy 45
grams one in steps of 10 grams. We are still considering a non-recurved bow (a
"long bow") the effect of recurving are simply of increasing the final speed
As we'd have expected, light arrows go much faster than heavy ones. We also see,
however, that the lightest arrow has a very strong velocity variation which,
intuitively, we would see as a cause for instability. To visualize this point, let's plot
now the accelerations for ths same case as above

We see that we pay the higher speeds obtained for much larger accelerations of
both the arrow and the limbs. At the limits, shooting a too light arrow with a strong
bow may lead to break the arrow or even the bow, another effect weel known in
practice.

Bracing

The phisics of the "bracing height", i.e. the distance between the string and the bow
for a strung bow is one of the least understood points of archery. Empirically, no
archer would ever shoot a "loose" bow and it is known that there is an optimum
bracing height, but this point is not easy to determine, nor it is clear why there is
such a point. Normally, the manuals will tell you to refer to the manufacturer's
specifications. The manuals may also tell you to try different heights and some will
tell you to seek the best bracing point as the one which gives the "most satisfactory
noise". More rigorous tests require either sophisticated instruments, or a very long
series of trial and error experiments. Among several problems, here, one is that the
bracing height is normally changed by twisting or un-twisting the string, something
that changes its elastic properties and its stiffness. Furthermore, changing the string
length also changes the degree of tension of the limbs and hence the weight of the
bow. Hence, for each height the whole bow would need to be "retuned" in terms of
arrow weight, spine, nocking point, etcetera..... No wonder that this point is not easy
and not so well understood.

We can use Hickman's model to try to get some insight on how bracing affects the
speed of the arrow. So, let's try with the same parameters as before, a "longbow"
with an arrow weight of 25 g, total limb weight of 1 Kg and a draw length equal to
the limb length, assumed to be constant with varying bracing heights. Here are the
results for speeds:
Somewhat surprisingly, we observe that the final arrow speed changes very little for
different bracing heights. The small variation may be explained taking into account
that as we said with larger heights we pull more the limbs so what we lose in
draw length we gain in higher weight of the bow. This is easily seen in the plot of
the accelerations:

Where we see that for higher bracing heighs the arrow moves for a shorter path but
it is accelerated more, in the end attaining about the same speed.

The speed does increase a little for lower heights, a result which seems to agree
with the calculations reported by Tuyn and Kooi. However, a surprising result is that
the model gives no "optimal" bracing height: the highest speed for the arrow and
the lowest accleration for the tips is for a bracing height equal to zero. Here, clearly,
the model does not reproduce reality. It takes little effort to find out which is the bad
approximation: the model assumes not only perfectly rigid arms, but also an
infinitely rigid and zero mass string. Obviously, on practice this is not the case.

Let's see what happens as the arrow moves along the x axis. The model assumes no
mechanical action of the string on the tips and this makes sense. Indeed, as you
release the arrow, there is no mechanical pull of the string to the limb. All the force
at the tips is generated by the acceleration of the arrow and this is the result of
kinetic energy being transferred from the limbs to the arrow. (it is the "tau effect"
we had mentioned before). The model tells us that in an "ideal" system the tau
effect would bring the limbs to a complete stop exactly at the moment when the
arrow leaves the nocking point, independently of the bracing height. Actually, the
stopping action would be the smoother the smaller the bracing height.

In practice, reality takes over when the arrow leaves the nocking point. No string is
infinitely rigid and all obviously do "give in" little. In addition, the string has a
non negligible mass, this means that not all the elastic energy of the limbs goes to
the arrow as kinetic energy, part of it goes to the string as both elastic and kinetic
energy. As the arrow leaves the nocking point this string energy reappears as
vibrations and as a strong "kick" to the limbs, forcing them to stop their motion. For
a very small bracing height, the slack of the string may lead the limbs to vibrate all
the way to the other side, as if the bow had no bracing at all, this may the cause of
the bad noises and sudden increase in vibrations that archers report when they
reduce the bracing beyond a certain point.

These effects are very difficult to include in Hickman's model, and even if it were
easy, it would force us to introduce a number of variable parameters that would
destroy the simplicity of the model. But the fact that the model does not reproduce
reality in a perfect way does not mean that it is useless. On the contrary it, helps us
to understand the physical phenomena going on. In telling us about an ideal
system, it has permitted us to isolate those effects which are far from ideal and
which eventually have to do with the behavior or real world materials. From these
considerations we can conclude that the most rigid and lighter strings are the best
for archery, which is again in agreement with the conventional archer's wisdom. I've
also the impression that in many modern bows the bracing height could be reduced
without any loss of performance. Some modern bows may be somewhat
"overbraced", perhaps because the use of fiberglass and other modern materials
does forgive a deformation of the limbs that would be dangerous for older materials.
But, as we saw, there are several effects that go on and which tend to compensate
each other, so that the bracing height turns out to be a very forgiving parameter.

Conclusion

The optimization of a multi-parameter technological system is always a difficult

task, one that turns out to be actually impossible in a rigorous sense if the number
of parameters exceeds a certain limit. All this means that the optimization of
complex systems can be only obtained with a judicious application of human
intuition and experience as well as of the "good enough" principle. The bow, even
though apparently simple, is actually one of those systems. The calculations
reported here were not meant to be rigorous, but just as an example to illustrate
how the coupling of simple models and human intuition can lead to a better
understanding of the physics of a technological systems.

http://www.surfchem.unifi.it/solid/bardi/archery/dynamics/

Short Bows and Long Bows: Scaling effects in archery

By Ugo Bardi 2000

On the left: one of the smallest examples of bows. A replica of an Indian bow
demonstrated by Jim Hamm, this diminutive bow (90 cm, 36") is nevertheless not a
toy and can be used for hunting.

On the right, a Roman Palintonon catapult according to the reconstruction of M.

Viollet le Duc. Among the largest bow-like machines ever built, the bow arms could
span up to 3-4 meters and the the weapons could shoot 400 Kg projectiles

Hand held bows are normally made as large as it is practically possible. This large
size makes them somewhat unyeldy and difficult to handle. Nevertheless, at the
simplest level it seems logical that a larger bow can shoot a larger an heavier arrow,
which may be a good thing for the archer (if not for the prey or enemy). We know
that in ancient times bow-like machines much larger than ordinary bows (catapults)
have been built and used to shoot very large arrows or projectiles. On the other
hand, hunters or people using bows while riding a horse would normally use smaller
bows. Indian bows were almost never the full length of a European longbow. Again,
there seem to be logical reasons for wanting to use a small bow: it is easier to
handle and to carry. Now, what is exactly that makes long bows more effective than
short ones, and what are the physical factors that control the characteristics of
short and and long bows? In physics you call these effects scaling laws.

Lets consider first small bows. How small can a bow be made and still be effective
for some practical purpose? In "Gullivers travels", Jonathan Swift describes how the
protagonist is attacked by Lilliputian armies of archers. In the story, Gulliver is
almost unaffected by the small arrows shot at him, and his only worry is to avoid to
be hit in the eyes. Intuitively, it sounds logical, but lets see if we can say something
more quantitative. Lets consider a Lilliputian archer and for focussing our thought
we may think of it as a something like 20 cm (8") tall. There is a host of scaling
factors to be considered about the size and proportions of a biological creature. In
general, we can be sure that if evolutionary pressure were to act to make humans
smaller ("turn them to pixies"), it is unthinkable that the proportions of the various
body parts would be maintained. For instance, if we reduce the linear size of a
human to a pixie ten times smaller, the body mass would be reduced not by a factor
of 10 but by a factor of 1000, but this should be corrected taking into account a
series of further scaling factors. For instance the thorax should be larger to
accommodate proportionally larger lungs which have an inner surface proportional
to volume. And then, the head should be large enough to accommodate a cortex
with a sufficient number of neurons to make the creature capable to use a bow, no
small feat. On the other hand, the relative weight and volume of some parts of the
body can be reduced. For instance, the legs have to carry a proportionally lower
weight, and so can be thinner. On the whole, if created by real biological forces, a
Lilliputian would not look so much like a small human being, more like a mouse with
a large head, and it would not be necessarily pretty.
But we are not interested so much here about our small archer being pretty or not,
and our initial question can be perhaps reformulated as "can a mouse us a bow?".
Why not? The little beasties are known to be smart, and you never know what they
could do. So, the main point about archery is to shoot arrows with the highest
possible kinetic energy, so that theyll go as far away as possible and penetrate the
target as deeply as possible. In bows, this energy is given simply by the very
definition that you can find in textbooks: a force that moves its application point. In
a bow, the force is the "pulling force", the elongation is what is called "draw". The
larger these two factors, the higher the energy. Very obviously there are limits to
both: human force is limited, and the length of ones arms determines the length of
the draw. A smaller archer is limited both in draw length and in force. We said that
we would consider an archer of 1/10 size of a human being and that means that the
draw is reduced of the same factor. Regarding force, this is roughly proportional to
the area of the section of the muscles involved (this is why people engaging in
weight lifting or arm wrestling have such thick arms). In proportion, the force would
then be reduced of a factor of 100 (this assumes that the thickness of the arms of
the elf is proportionally the same as in a normal sized human beings, we said that
evolution would make this is unlikely, but it is not impossible either). So, on the
whole the energy involved with a "toy bow" about 10 cm length that could be
operated by a mouse (or an elf, or a pixie, or a Lilliputian, or whatever) is a factor of
1000 smaller than that of a human sized bow.

This factor of 1000, impressive as it is, is not such a great handicap if you consider
that the arrow, too, is smaller and lighter. Again, being everything linearly reduced
of a factor of 10, the arrow weight is 1/1000th of that of a human sized arrow. So,
things even out, and the speed at which a Lilliputian arrow can be shot is just the
same as that of the human one. Now, 10 cm (4") bows are not so common around,
but this result fits with the evidence for what we know about short bows. Even today
some archers (human ones.) like to use short bows, and will try to convince you
that their bow is as god as a long bow by measuring the initial speed of the arrow
and showing you that it is the same as (or even higher than ) that of a longbow. Yes,
a short bow - actually any bow independently of size - can shoot a light arrow at a
remarkably high initial speed, but there is a problem with small bows that well see
now: aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is the key factor governing the flight of an arrow. We know that in
general an object moving through a viscous fluid experiences a resistance force
proportional to speed (v) and to the cross section (A): F=KAv. The accelleration
(actually a deceleration) caused by this force is simpy this force divided by the
object mass (Newtons law: F=ma). So we have an equation of motion to solve as
Speed (v) is a function of time and solving this equation we can see how the arrow
speed varies after having been shot. This is a simple equation to solve: for a
function (v) to be proportional to its first derivative it has to be some kind of
exponential, that is the basis of the natural logarythms, e, elevated to something.
The result of the integration is

vo is the initial velocity, the speed of the arrow just as it leaves the bow. We see
that for t very large the exponential tends to zero and this speed tends to zero, too.
Also, there is a time for which the speed of the arrow becomes half of the initial
speed. This "halving" time is given by

We cant calculate this time exactly since we dont know the values of the constant
K, but we see that a heavier arrow will, in principle, maintain its speed for a longer
time and hence fly farther (for the same initial energy). This may seem to contradict
the archers common habit of choosing arrows as light as possible, but there is a
reason for that, too. A heavy arrow will start slower than a light arrow, but it will
maintain its speed for a long time and eventually overtake it. But both arrows will
feel the effects of gravity and fall down at the same speed. Being slower at the
beginning, the heavier arrow will lose more height and as a consequence has to be
shot with a more arched trajectory. Archers (as all shooters) much prefer flat
trajectories which make it much easier to aim, hence the preference for lighter
projectiles.

Now, back to our Lilliputian extra small arrow, we said that its mass is 1/1000th of
that of a human arrow. We can also say that its cross section (A) goes with the
square of the length and is by necessity 1/100th. And, alas, when combined in the
formula, we see that t1/2 for the small arrow is ten times smaller than for a normal,
human sized, arrow. Here is the effect of aerodynamics: small projectiles are always
at a great disadvantage with respect to large ones. An Elvish arrow would start very
fast, but rapidly lose speed. Since the distance covered is proportional to speed, its
range would likely be also 1/10 of that of the human sized one.

The effects of aerodynamics on small arrows do not end here. For some time the
arrow flies in air but at some time hopefully (for the archer) it will hit the target and
do its effects. The arrow penetration into living tissue can be approximately
described by the same aerodynamical equations written above. Just, the constant
"K" will be much larger for a denser medium. Again, at the same speed the
Lilliputian arrow would penetrate approximately 1/10 less depth than the human
arrow. You see that Swift correctly described Gullivers situation even though he
probably didnt make any calculations.

In the end, all this reasoning has led us to discover that what is called in physcis the
"scaling factor" for bows is just one. A bow half size is very roughly just as deadly
at half the distance, but there may well be conditions in which range is not the most
important factor: hunting for instance. The maximum range of a longbow is a few
hundred meters, but the practical range (the range at which you have reasonable
chances to hit anything smaller than a mammoth) is only of a few tens of meters.
So, a small bow may have its practical uses, too, and there are interesting
experimental data confirming this point. Jim Hamm reports in his book on the
archery of American Indians that in many cases the Indian archers neither pulled
their bows to the maximum possible elongation, nor to the maximum force. Their
"pizzicato" style of archery (holding the arrow between index and thumb) made it
impossible to use all the force that a European archer can muster by using three
fingers to pull the string. In practice these indians let the arrow fly much before the
maximum force was reached, and their bows were very small, too (though not
Lilliputian!). There is plenty of logic in this style. As we have seen, using light arrows
you can shoot at a very high speed, and the pizzicato style makes sure that you
shoot fast anybody who has tried intuitive archery knows that thinking too much is
the sure way to miss. In hunting you have no time to aim, you just let fly, speed is
everything. As a shortcoming, these Indian arrows do not have a very long range
but, again, what would be the benefit of shooting at hundreds of meters? Thats not
the way to get a turkey for dinner. Incidentally, penetration here is often not an
issue either: when hunting small game Indians would often use "blunt" arrows (i.e.
without metal or stone tips) designed to stun the target rather than killing it
immediately. The perhaps surprising conclusion is that maybe, for hunting, humans
are somewhat oversized for the purposes of using a bow and that hunting bows
could be profitaby used by smaller creatures, if not Pixie sized perhaps at least
Hobbit sized.

A different story is bows used in war. In that case, precision becomes a lesser
concern and range becomes fundamental. In war you are not aiming at a single
enemy, it is a mass of archers shooting at another mass of troops some distance
away. Here, if you can shoot from a larger range you have a definite advantage, and
if the enemy is charging at you you can start shooting earlier and shower them with
more arrows. The shape and size of military bows follow from these considerations:
maximum range obtained by large bows pulled to the limits of the strength of the
archer. Also, arrows are large with heavy tips, true mini-javelins designed to
maintain their speed for a long time and to fall on the enemy with full force from
above. It may be that for military archery humans are actually undersized, and this
explains the development in history of all sort of bow-like devices (crossbows and
catapults) designed to cram more energy into the arrow.
So, our initial question was: "could a very small creature (Elf, mouse or Lilliputian)
profitably use a bow?" The answer is yes, provided that we take into account range
and size of the target. If our Elf archer can get within a couple of meters of his prey
(say, a mouse), then a well placed arrow to the creatures chest will likely penetrate
at a sufficient depth to cut the inner organs and snuff it. Whether this would be
practical or not it is difficult to say, but in fantasy novels and games we can at least
imagine the existence of armies of pixie archers...

http://www.surfchem.unifi.it/solid/bardi/archery/scalingbows/index.html