Analysis of projectile motion in view of fractional calculus

Abstract

The projectile motion is examined by means of the fractional calculus. The fractional differential equations of the projectile motion are introduced by generalizing Newton’s second law and Caputo’s fractional derivative is considered to use the physical initial conditions. In the absence of air resistance it is found that at certain conditions, the range and the maximum height of the projectile obtained by using the fractional calculus give the same results of the classical calculus. It is also found that, unlike the classical projectile motion, the launching angle that maximizes the horizontal range is a function of the arbitrary order of the fractional derivative α. Moreover, in a resistant medium, the parametric equations are expressed in terms of Mittag-Leffler function and the results agree with those of the classical projectile as α → 2. Moreover, the trajectories of the projectile are discussed in graphs and compared with those of the classical calculus. In order to explore the validity of modelling the projectile motion by the fractional approach, we compared our results with the experimental data of mortar.