Graduation and Terminal Ballistics

Congratulations to one of our very talented Ward team members, Brianna Dorrough, who recently graduated from the University of Newcastle (UON) with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Civil). Brianna completed the first two years of her studies full-time, then switched to part-time three years ago after joining Ward.

Brianna’s hard work and perseverance has paid off – in addition to receiving an honours degree, the final year research project, which she has been working on for the last 12 months, was chosen to feature in UON’s first ever public engineering exhibition; a close-up look at the most innovative and exciting projects created by UON engineering students. Brianna’s project titled “Probabilistic Modelling of Terminal Ballistics” (feel free to Google some/all of those words) was all about the variability of the depth of penetration of a bullet when it impacts a steel target. As part of the project Brianna spent time at a military rifle range where the skills of a sharp shooting professional marksman were used to fire the bullets.

While it’s not your everyday civil engineering project, the study of ballistics is important to the design of structures such as government buildings, embassies, banks and military structures.