A pellet is a non-spherical projectile designed to be fired from an air gun, and an airgun that fires such pellets is commonly known as a pellet gun. Air gun pellets differ from bullets, shells and shot used in firearms and artillery in terms of the pressures encountered; airguns operate at pressures as low as 50 atmospheres, while firearms and artillery operate at thousands of atmospheres. Airguns generally use a slightly undersized projectile that is designed to obturate upon shooting so as to seal the bore, and engage the rifling; firearms have sufficient pressure to force a slightly oversized bullet to fit the bore in order to form a tight seal. Since pellets may be shot through a smoothbore barrel, they are often designed to be inherently stable, much like the Foster slugs used in smoothbore shotguns.
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👉 Pellet (air gun) in the context of Obturate
Obturation is the necessary barrel blockage or fit in a firearm or airgun created by a deformed soft projectile. A bullet or pellet made of soft material and often with a concave base will flare under the heat and pressure of firing, filling the bore and engaging the barrel's rifling. The mechanism by which an undersized soft-metal projectile enlarges to fill the barrel is, for hollow-base bullets, expansion from gas pressure within the base cavity and, for solid-base bullets, "upsetting"—the combined shortening and thickening that occurs when a malleable metal object is struck forcibly at one end.
Obturation is achieved in shotgun shells (which have multiple pellets much smaller than the barrel bore) by placing a plastic wad or biodegradable card of the same diameter as the barrel between the propellant powder and the pellets.
Pellet (air gun) in the context of Air gun
An air gun or airgun is a gun that uses compressed air or other pressurized gases to fire projectiles, reminiscent of the principle behind the ancient blowgun. This is in contrast to a firearm, which shoots projectiles using pressure generated via combustion of a chemical propellant, most often black powder in antique firearms and smokeless powder in modern firearms.
Air guns come in both long gun (air rifle) and handgun (air pistol) forms. Both types typically propel metallic projectiles that are either diabolo-shaped pellets or spherical shots called BBs, although in recent years Minié ball-shaped cylindro-conoidal projectiles called slugs are gaining more popularity. Certain types of air guns (usually air rifles) may also launch fin-stabilized projectile such as darts (e.g., tranquilizer guns) or hollow-shaft arrows (so-called "airbows").
Pellet (air gun) in the context of Muzzle velocity
Muzzle velocity is the speed of a projectile (bullet, pellet, slug, ball/shots or shell) at the moment it leaves the end of a gun's barrel (i.e. the muzzle). Firearm muzzle velocities range from approximately 120 m/s (390 ft/s) to 370 m/s (1,200 ft/s) in black powder muskets, to more than 1,200 m/s (3,900 ft/s) in modern rifles with high-velocity cartridges such as the .220 Swift and .204 Ruger, all the way to 1,700 m/s (5,600 ft/s) for tank guns firing kinetic energy penetrator ammunition. To simulate orbital debris impacts on spacecraft, NASA launches projectiles through light-gas guns at speeds up to 8,500 m/s (28,000 ft/s).Several factors, including the type of firearm, the cartridge, and the barrel length, determine the bullet's muzzle velocity.
Pellet (air gun) in the context of Slug (projectile)
A slug is a term used for a bulky solid ballistic projectile. It is "solid" in the sense of being composed of one piece; the shape can vary widely, including partially hollowed shapes. The term is occasionally applied to bullets (just the projectile, never the cartridge as a whole), but is most commonly applied to one-piece shotgun slugs, to differentiate them from shotshells containing numerous shots. Slugs are commonly fired from un-choked smoothbore barrels, but some specially designed slug barrels have riflings that can impart gyroscopic spin required for in-flight stability.
An airgun slug is a type of pellet more recently developed for pre-charged pneumatic airguns. Unlike the conventional diabolo-shaped pellet, which is aerodynamically poor and relies heavily on drag-stabilisation to maintain accuracy, the slug pellet is cylindro-conoidally shaped like a Minié ball and relies predominantly on spin-stabilisation from a rifled barrel. Because of the greater contact area with the barrel bore, these pellets require more power from the gun to overcome the frictional resistance, and therefore are mainly used in PCP airguns, which generally have much higher muzzle energy ratings than other types of airguns such as spring-piston, pump pneumatic or HPA/CO2 airguns.