The Role of Materials in the Design of an Improved Cricket Bat
- PDF / 1,692,802 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 576 x 777.6 pts Page_size
- 89 Downloads / 140 Views
weighting. Improved perimeter weighting, typically achieved by introducing one or more scallops in the back of the blade, was an attempt to redistribute the weight of the blade to the edges. Despite marketing that promotes these improvements, reliable evidence to support these performance improvements is hard to find. The present work was initiated to determine whether the traditional bat could be improved through design and the use of modern materials. The scope for using advanced materials is limited as the rules 2 insist that the blade be made of wood. English willow is traditionally used for the blade because it is relatively light and tough. The material for the handle is not prescribed. Cane is invariably used, interlaced with strips of rubber. This is intended to provide protection against the transmission of painful vibrations to the player's hands. Standard engineering modeling techniques have been employed to answer basic questions such as, "Why do similar bats apparently differ widely in their performance?" and "How well might a properly designed bat perform?"
Performance Measures Manufacturers determine the quality of a wooden bat not by mechanical testing but by the aesthetic appearance of the grain structure in the blade. Blades are cut with the face parallel to a radial plane of the tree and the long axis of the bat parallel to the vertical axis of the tree. Growth rings in the tree appear as parallel lines running down the face. The number and linearity of lines visible on the face, and the absence of knots and
other blemishes, are the principal factors that should determine quality. How these affect the performance of the bat or its durability is not clear. The optimum point of impact on a bat is known colloquially as the sweet spot. This is the point where the player feels little reaction and the ball flies sweetly off the bat. Improvements in performance might be expressed in terms of an enlargement of the sweet spot or an improvement in its efficacy. However no consensus exists as to the precise nature of the sweet spot and how it might be measured. A number of definitions have been proposed as follows:3 center of per- : cussion, node point, and power point.
Center of Percussion The center of percussion is the point below the center of mass where the rearward recoil of linear momentum is exactly balanced by the forward recoil at the handle of angular momentum. Striking the ball at the center of percussion in a rigid bat would produce no reaction in the player's hands. This is not a property of the bat alone because it also depends on the instantaneous center of rotation c at the time of impact. Its position may readily be determined as k2/c below the center of mass G where k is the radius of gyration of the bat. The position varies with c and therefore with the type of shot being played. In a cut shot, for example—in which case the instantaneous center would be at some point on the handle—the center of percussion is well below the center of mass. In a straightarm drive, in which case the instan
Data Loading...
