On the fall of an object with both linear and quadratic air

resistance
Jorge Andrade
Independent researcher, Puebla, Mexico.
E-mail: aldon2004@[Link]
18 August 2021

Abstract: The case of a particle falling with both linear and quadratic drag is studied and analysed, the
equation of motion is solved, and the amount of energy loss is discussed. It wil be treated for the
special case of an iron ball with a radius of 10 cm dropped from the tower of Pisa, and then for a
wooden ball of the same size. The behaviour of the solution is found to be qualitatively similat to that
of just linear or quadratic drag.

Introduction
Most university level physics textbooks deal with the well-known problem of determining the position
and velocity of an object falling in a uniform gravitational field with air resistance (cf. Thornton &
Marion, 2004), usually they only consider under either linear or quadratic drag, each of which are valid
on a certain range of values of the Reynolds number, the linear one is generally accepted to be valid for
Reynolds numbers below about 1, while the quadratic is valid for Reynolds number above about 1000
and 250000 (Timmerman & van der Weele, 1998) and with speeds below the speed of sound. What
happens when neither linear nor quadratic drag can be assumed? A solution is to consider a case in
which a particle has both linear and quadratic drag:
f (v )=−bv −cv ². (1)

The model considered here might be useful to model the motion of certain skydivers, or even the so-
called HALO jumps, such as those of Felix Baumgartner in 2012, or Joseph Kittinger in 1960.
Hernández, Marquina & Gómez (2013) used a variant of the model considered in the following
sections to explain and understand the performance of Usain Bolt in the athletic races.

The main motivation of this paper is to adress a case that it is often not treated in physics textbooks,
and try to give understanding about the nature of drag forces and their effects on a falling body, also to
give tutors a way teach the relationship between special cases and more general ones.

Analysis of the equation of motion and its solution

The point of starting will be Newton’s second law. Fnet =ma , so one can add the force given by Eq.
(1), to the constant force of gravity to obtain ma=mg−bv−cv ² , considering the definition of
acceleration as the rate of change of velocity and the definition of velocity as the rate of change of
position, one obtains a system of two differential equations that must be supplemented with suitable
initial conditions:
dv dy
m =mg−bv−cv ² v = (2),
dt dt
for the velocity v and the height aboove the ground y and initial conditions v(0)=0 and y(0)=-h, where h
is the height from which the object is thrown and it is negative since the downwards direction was
chosen to be positive.

Something that one can do is finding the terminal velocity of the particle. Setting the left hand side of
the first equation above to zero one obtains the equation for the terminal velocity:
 cv T ²+ bv T −mg=0 . (3)
−b+ √ b ²+ 4 mgc
The terminal velocity from the quadratic formula is found to be vT = (4), where the
2c
positive solution has been chosen since the velocity has to increase by the initial conditions.

While equation (2) is a Riccati equation that may be solved by reducing it to a linear differential
equation, the equation of motion may be solved easily via separation of variables, obtaining
dv 1
∫ cv ²+bv−mg =− m t + K , (5)
where K is a constant of integration that may be found by applying the initial conditions. Performing
the integral avobe gives
2 b+2 cv −t
− artanh( )= + K , (6)
B B m
where B=√ b ²+ 4 mgc . The integration constant K may be found easily by applying initial
−2 b
conditions, the result is K= artanh ( ) . With all of this, one may invert equation (6) to obtain
B B
the velocity of the particle as a function of time, obtaining
B Bt b b
v (t )= tanh ( +artanh ( ))− .(7)
2c 2m B 2c
While this expression is rather messy, one can easily check, using the properties of the inverse
hyperbolic tangent function, that the above result tends to the terminal velocity given by equation (4).
We can now integrate the velocity to give the height of the object above the ground as a function of
time. The result is
m Bt b m B bt
y (t)=−h+ ln (cosh( +artanh ( )))− ln( )− . (8)
c 2m B c √ B ²−b ² 2 c
And the acceleration of the object may be found by differentiating equation (7):
B² 2 Bt B
a( t)= sech ²( +artanh ( )) (9).
4 mc m b

As we wil see on the following sections, the qualitative behaviour of the solutions (7) and (8) is similar
to that of the well known cases with only linear and quadraitic drag forces.

Note that while there is no closed form, analytic expression for the time to fall t fall that can be
obtained from equation (8), an approximation may be trivially obtained numerically.

Inserting data on the model

According to a tale that is most likely a legend, around 1590, Galileo dropped spheres from the tower
of Pisa in order to show that things fall at the same rate. Adler & Coulter (1978) showed that due to the
effects of air, Galileo could not have obtained the results claimed by the tale. But let us apply this
model to a hypotetical actual performance of the experiment. We will consider an iron ball of radius
r=10 cm=0.1 m. For a spherical object, there is a well-known simple formula discovered by George
Stokes for the coefficient of the viscous, linear drag b=6 πηr , where η is the viscosity of the
1
medium. For the quadratic, pressure drag, it is known experimentally that c= ρ C D A , where ρ is
2
the density of the medium, assumed to be constant, and A is the reference area, generally accepted to be
the area of the orthographic of the object. The mass of our sphere will be given by the product of its
4
density and volume, m= π ρobject r ³ . And for a sphere, we can set A=πr ² , the area of a circle
3
with the same radius as the sphere. The value of g will be assumed to be 9.8 m/s². From wikipedia the
density of iron can be found to be 7.874 g/cm³, or 7874 kg/m³. The above table gives the computed
values:
Variable Value (in MKS units)
r 0.1 m
A 0.13 m²
CD 0.5
ρ 1.22 kg/m³ (source: Physics factbook)
ρobject 7874 kg/m³
η 2.07×10⁻⁵ Pa s (source: Engineers edge)
m 32.98 kg
The above data gives values for b of 3.9×10⁻⁵ kg/s and for c of 0.0397 kg/m, and a terminal velocity of
90.26 m/s. The values for air density and viscosity are based on the average temperature of Pisa
(roughly 20°C, World Meteorological Organisation).

Figure 1

Figure 1 above shows the height and the velocity of the iron ball as a function of time. The ball has a
falling time of roughly 3.4 s, and the motion is almost the same as that of the well known case without
drag, the ball falls with a velocity of 81.33 m/s. Now, consider another ball of the same size, but instead
made of wood. From the Physics factbook database, the density of wood is around 750 kg/m³. This
gives a mass of 3.142kg, a terminal velocity of 27.85 m/s, and a falling time of around 3.81 s.

Work done on the system and energy dissipation

1
From elementary mechanics, the energy of this system is E= mv ²−mgy (10). From this, the rate
2
dE
of energy loss is =( ma−mg) v=(−bv−cv ²) v=−bv ²−cv ³ (11), which, as expected is always
dt
negative since energy is converted into heat and absorbed by the air and thus monotonically decreasing.
We can compute the total change in energy by integrating equation (11), which is
t fall

Δ E=−∫ (bv ²+cv ³)dt (12). In practice, however, this integral will be cumersome, and we may
0
estimate energy dissipation by the following: We know that Δ E=E(t fall )−E (0) . Using the known
 1
values for position and velocity at t=0 and t=t fall , we obtain Δ E= mv(t fall ) ²−mgh (13).
2
Another quantity of interest is the percentage energy loss, which is
E(t fall )×100 v (t fall)×100
Δ E %= = (14). For the above case of the wooden sphere falling, the
E(0) 2 gh
energy decreased between the initial time and the falling time by 507.4 J, and the energy at the falling
time is 70.54% of the initial energy, so that roughly 30% of the energy was dissipated.

Discussion
We have solved the equation of motion, and we have analysed and studied its solutions with suitable
initial conditions. The dynamics is qualitatively similar to the simpler cases with only linear or
quadratic drag force. This analysis shows can also show the similar behaviour of different functions,
and it lets us have a more realistic model of a falling object, and might be useful for research on how
when is drag force justified to be ignored.

References
Adler, C. G., Coulter, B. L. (1978). Galileo and the tower of Pisa experiment. American Journal of
Physics, 46(3), pp. 199-201.

Hernández, J. J., Marquina, V., Gómez, R. W. (2013). On the performance of Usain Bolt in the 100 m
sprint. European Journal of Physics, 34(5), pp. 1227-1233.

Timmerman, P., van der Weele, J. P., (1999). On the rise and fall of a ball with linear or quadratic drag.
American Journal of Physics, 67(6), pp. 548-546.

Thornton, S., Marion, B. (2004). Classical dynamics of particles and systems. Belmont, CA: Brooks
Cole.

World Meteorologcical Organisation. (n.d.). Pisa. In WMO. Retrieved from

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