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Effect of string bed pattern on ball spin generation from a tennis racket

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Abstract

Topspin has become a vital component of modern day tennis. Ball-to-string bed and inter-string friction coefficients can affect topspin generation from a racket. The aim of this research was to determine the effect of string bed pattern on topspin generation. Tennis balls were projected onto nine head-clamped rackets with different string bed patterns. The balls were fired at 24 m/s, at an angle of 26° to the string bed normal with a backspin rate of 218 rad/s and outbound velocity, spin and angle were measured. Outbound velocity was shown to be independent of string bed pattern. Outbound angle increased with the number of cross strings, while outbound topspin decreased. In the most extreme case, decreasing the number of cross strings from 19 to 13 increased rebound topspin from 117 to 170 rad/s.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Mr Terry Senior for designing and developing the test rig and Prince Sports for providing equipment for testing. The authors also like to thank Dr Simon Choppin and Dr Heather Driscoll for proof reading the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Alexander Nicolaides, Nathan Elliott, John Kelley & Tom Allen

  2. Department of Engineering and Maths, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Tom Allen

  3. Prince Sports, Venice, Italy

    Mauro Pinaffo

Authors
  1. Alexander Nicolaides
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  2. Nathan Elliott
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  3. John Kelley
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  4. Mauro Pinaffo
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  5. Tom Allen
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Correspondence to Tom Allen.

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Nicolaides, A., Elliott, N., Kelley, J. et al. Effect of string bed pattern on ball spin generation from a tennis racket. Sports Eng 16, 181–188 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12283-013-0118-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12283-013-0118-y

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