The impact phenomena of a tennis ball on a rigid surface are experimentally investigated by high-speed video camera. It is found that the maximum values of deformations of a ball increase with the incident velocity of a ball, while the collision time and the values of the restitution coefficient decrease with the incident velocity.
The dynamical model including both elastic and damping properties is proposed to explain our experimental results. We have found that our model can well reproduce the experimental values of the restitution coefficient, the collision time and the time history of the deformations.
We also investigate theoretically the rebound velocity,the collision time and the displacement of a ball when it collides with a accelerated rigid surface.