著者

川副 嘉彦 武田 幸弘 中川 慎理

出版者

一般社団法人 日本機械学会

雑誌

日本機械学会論文集C編 (ISSN:18848354)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, no.799, pp.726-737, 2013 (Released:2013-03-25)

参考文献数

14

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Several former top players sent a letter to the International Tennis Federation (ITF) encouraging the governing body to revisit the question of rackets. In the letter, the players wrote that racket technology has led to major changes in how the game is played at the top level. This paper investigated the physical properties of a new type of racket with active piezoelectric fibers appeared recently in the market, and predicted the various factors associated with the frontal impact, such as impact force, contact time, deformation of ball and strings, and also estimated the racket performance such as the coefficient of restitution, the rebound power coefficient, the post-impact ball velocity and the sweet areas relevant to the power in tennis. It is based on the experimental identification of the dynamics of the ball-racket-arm system and the approximate nonlinear impact analysis with a simple swing model. The predicted results with forehand stroke model can explain the difference in mechanism of performance between the new type racket with active piezoelectric fibers and the conventional passive representative rackets. It showed that this new type racket provides higher coefficient of restitution on the whole area of string face and also gives larger rebound power coefficients particularly at the topside and bigger powers on the whole area of string face but the difference was not so large. It seems that the racket-related improvements in play are relatively small and the players themselves continue to improve, accordingly there is a gap between a perception and reality.

著者

川副 嘉彦 武田 幸弘 中川 慎理 Federico CASOLO 友末 亮三 吉成 啓子

出版者

一般社団法人 日本機械学会

雑誌

日本機械学会論文集C編 (ISSN:18848354)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, no.808, pp.4994-5009, 2013 (Released:2013-12-25)

参考文献数

13

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The lightweight racket with handle-light configuration and large head size is recent tendency of high-tech tennis rackets, increasing power or post-impact ball velocity with an increasing racket swing speed. This paper investigated the performance of lightweight balanced racket with super-large head size with 120 square inches in terms of feel or comfort. It predicted the effect of the mass and mass distribution of super-large head sized rackets on the impact shock vibrations of the racket handle and the player's wrist joint when a player hits a flat forehand drive. The prediction is based on the identification of the racket characteristics, the damping of the racket-arm system, equivalent mass of the player's arm system and the approximate nonlinear impact analysis in tennis. A lightweight balanced racket (mass: 292 g, the center of gravity LG: 363 mm from the butt end) and a conventional weight and weight balanced racket (349 g, LG: 323 mm) are selected as representatives. These two super-large head sized rackets made of carbon graphite have the same head size and same geometry. The result showed that the shock vibration of the lightweight balanced racket with super-large sized head is much larger than that of the conventional weight balanced type racket. It also showed that the sweet area of the former in terms of the shock vibration shifts from the center to the topside on the racket face compared to the latter. This is because the location of the grip on the racket handle is further from the location of the node on the handle of the first mode of lightweight balanced racket than that of the conventional weight balanced racket.