Trebuchet - help with design.....

[lawsonm1]

My oldest son (he's 10) is interested in ancient warfare, soldiers, and armies. So I got to thinking about also getting him interested in programming. So I was thinking that these two things would be perfect. Write a program that would be able to perform all of the calculations needed to design and build a Trebuchet. Say, have a menu where you could enter the value of the projectile and it would calculate out all the other variable values, or the distance you wanted a projectile to travel and the other values would be calculated, or you enter the counter weight value and the other values get calculated,...... You get the idea. My problem is that I am no genius when it comes to math of this level. So I told him about all of the math geniuses' on this forum....... So, if anyone has any ideas, suggestions, etc. please let me know. Thanks, Mike

[EricE]

Hi Mike,

This sounds very interesting.

I found this video at Youtube which gives some Trebuchet design considerations.
How to Design the Perfect Trebuchet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmSl9AqmVyc

The video references a paper on Trebuchet mechanics.
Trebuchet Mechanics, by Donald B. Siano
http://www.algobeautytreb.com/trebmath356.pdf

...and these videos also look good.
Trebuchet Physics Tutorial: Make Your Trebuchet Throw Farther
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAX72Xgf1U

Trebuchet Design Physics Tutorial (With Tuning Guidelines)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwkFCnEzK3Y

[bplus]

Here is very basic projectile study in a thread called Tanks Battle:
https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=1130.msg103258#msg103258

(you gotta start somewhere) ;-)

This whole thread is about projectiles and might be appealing for starters, Artillery Wanted:
https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=1452.0