I've been reading and will now write.
Dr. Jones, IMO, has written the best work yet by a very large margin on shotgun patterns.
His work on single pellet breaks is insightful, to say the least.
He finds the aiming accuracy required to have all targets in every 100/100 hit by multiple pellets improbable. This is reasonably arguable.
He has shown that single pellet hits do break targets; not every time, but some/many.
We have no data on the % of single pellet hits result in a broken target and/or the % that do not result in a broken target..
Jones's data shows that single pellet hits usually result in the target breaking into 2 to 4 pieces. Watch and see how many clays fit that description.
The mechanism of target breakage is by fracture. Clay targets are strong, but brittle. When a pellet hit starts a fracture, the centrifugal force of the spin causes the fracture to rapidly spread across the target. Brittle materials have very high rates of tip release for a fracture.
Does anyone have information as to the actual material characteristics of clays? Has anyone seen data on what is required to break one?
DDA
