A-11 Development of the tool to support the design of tennis racket

Abstract

The tool to support the design of tennis racket is proposed by introducing the fundamental stiffnesses of the tennis racket. The fundamental stiffnesses consist of the in-plane bending stiffness, out-of-plane bending stiffness and torsional stiffness of a part of tennis racket. Since the tennis racket is designed by the bending stiffness distribution of a racket, the relation between the introduced fundamental stiffness and the bending stiffness distribution of a racket must be clarified. Hence these stiffnesses are predicted by the finite element analysis where the shape of racket and the composite structure are considered, and then compared with the measurement. The FEM prediction does not quantitatively agree with the measurement, but the ratio of two stiffnesses is in good agreement with the measurement with respect to two kinds of composite structure of tennis racket.