Abstract
Hollow barrel baseball bats have higher batting performance than wooden bats. Generally, hollow metal bats are made from aluminum alloy tubes, and hollow composite baseball bats are madewith fiber glass, carbon yarn and others. In this study, a hollow composite baseball bat, which has a better batting performance than current commercial metal or composite bats, was proposed. The materials of the proposed composite bat include: an aluminum alloy in the grip part, coupled with an aluminum alloy and CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) in the barrel part. The effects of the bending and hoop modes of the hollow metal and composite barrel bats were investigated by modal analysis. Collisions between the bat and baseballs thrown using the pitch types of no-spin (knuckle ball) and back-spin (fastball), and the vertical offset distance (the height of the center distance between the bat and ball) varying between 0 to 20 mm were simulated. From the results of the simulations, the proposed new bat was found to have a high BBCOR (Bat-Ball Coefficient of Restitution) compared to metal baseball bats. It has been shown that the new composite barrel bat increases the performance of the hollow baseball bat.
