Ball question

Status
Not open for further replies.
K

kermitm

New
Hello forum members

I was hoping you all could help me with something. I keep hearing that the current ball goes farther (proportionately) the higher your swing speed. This does not seem possible to me, but I don't have a very indepth background in physics. Does anyone have an article or study that proves or disproves this argument. Thanks for your help. Kermitm
 
J

Jim Kobylinski

Super Moderator
Guess, pure guess, that it has to do with spin. Usually as ball speed goes up so does spin, but if you can keep the spin rate down and significantly increase ball speed you are going to hit it much longer.

I mean, ideally, the #'s you need to hit it the furthest for launch/spin isn't dramatically different for say a 150mph ballspeed or a 170mph ballspeed. It's not like the 150mph person could lower spin further and hit it further, it might even go shorter because it would fall out of the sky too soon.

Again, puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure guess.
 
D

dbl

New
The coefficient of restitution can vary by clubhead speed impact, and they can engineer it so more energy is transferred to the ball for flight rather than heat (internal losses). This was a way to beat the ODS.
 
Last edited:
mgranato

mgranato

New
A member of our club works for the chemical company that supplies "all" (his words) the ball makers with their raw materials for the ball's core. I had lunch with him a couple weeks ago and he politely let me pepper him with questions about all things golf balls for nearly an hour. Most of his explanations went right over my head, but one of my take aways was that the engineers can customize a ball for virtually any swing characteristic by adjusting the ratios between core sizes, outer core sizes, mantels, layers, and covers.
 
Frans@France

Frans@France

New
Jim Kobylinski said:
Guess, pure guess, that it has to do with spin. Usually as ball speed goes up so does spin, but if you can keep the spin rate down and significantly increase ball speed you are going to hit it much longer.

I mean, ideally, the #'s you need to hit it the furthest for launch/spin isn't dramatically different for say a 150mph ballspeed or a 170mph ballspeed. It's not like the 150mph person could lower spin further and hit it further, it might even go shorter because it would fall out of the sky too soon.

Again, puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure guess.
Click to expand...

from the link
It is possible that the material reacts as a harder material
when a normal force is applied (shot with less lofted
clubs) and reacts as a softer material with more elasticity as the
tangential force becomes greater (shot with lofted clubs).
Click to expand...
 
B

Billy McKinney

New
My sources at Titleist told me that if you can hit it hard enough, you can "dig" into the core a little more which gives an advantage to the stronger player. But this is also just layman's chat.
 
D

dbl

New
Just to add on another another bit of complexity, say some gorilla hits a driver with CHS of 140 mph, he might still be hitting the ball with wedge CHS of say 120 or 115 mph or whatever. So the layering, cover and other design aspects need to be considered to still have the ball act like a wedge hit it rather than a 120mph driver.
 
L

leon

New
Not sure what the OP was getting at, whether the question relates to impact or flight. Polymers are rate dependent, so the faster you compress them, the stiffer they behave. Polymers also exhibit something called hysteresis, which means when you unload them you lose some of the energy. At higher impact speeds, with stiffer behaviour, you might get less hysteresis loss (although I'm not sure this is always true and I'm too tired/lazy to look it up), so that would help with launch speed. But for flight the drag is proportional to velocity squared, so you need quite a boost in launch velocity to make up for the additional drag.
And as everyone has already noted, making polymers is a bit like baking a cake. You can mix whatever you want to get pretty much any behaviour you'd like.
 
J

Jim Kobylinski

Super Moderator
leon said:
Not sure what the OP was getting at, whether the question relates to impact or flight. Polymers are rate dependent, so the faster you compress them, the stiffer they behave. Polymers also exhibit something called hysteresis, which means when you unload them you lose some of the energy. At higher impact speeds, with stiffer behaviour, you might get less hysteresis loss (although I'm not sure this is always true and I'm too tired/lazy to look it up), so that would help with launch speed. But for flight the drag is proportional to velocity squared, so you need quite a boost in launch velocity to make up for the additional drag.
And as everyone has already noted, making polymers is a bit like baking a cake. You can mix whatever you want to get pretty much any behaviour you'd like.
Click to expand...

WARNING: Science Content. lol ;)
 
B

birly-shirly

New
Lay cynic's perspective.

Old guys usually complain about modern equipment more than young guys.

Old guys see young guys blasting it past them.

Old guys complain that the new technology isn't just ruining their game - but that it DISPROPORTIONATELY favours the young vandals. How unfair is that?

The ball goes further - but the rest is BS.
 
hp12c

hp12c

New
birly-shirly said:
Lay cynic's perspective.

Old guys usually complain about modern equipment more than young guys.

Old guys see young guys blasting it past them.

Old guys complain that the new technology isn't just ruining their game - but that it DISPROPORTIONATELY favours the young vandals. How unfair is that?

The ball goes further - but the rest is BS.
Click to expand...

Maybe virtuoso would do an animation on this similar to the one he did before.
 
L

leon

New
leon said:
Yeah, sorry about that. If anyone really cares I can dig out some more stuff next week when I'm back in work.
Click to expand...

Turns out my first week back was busier than I expected. Anyway, as I said I'd find something, take a look here:

Veryst Engineering: Golf Ball Impact Simulation

If you look at the stress-strain curve, it basically shows that at higher strain rates, the material is much stiffer, so less ball compression. The energy loss (i.e. the area inside the loop) is shown as bigger at higher strain rates, BUT, as the ball is stiffer it will deform less and hence won't go as far up the curve, so the energy loss may actually be lower.

Of course this is just one example and as was noted before, manufacturers can very the material to get pretty much and properties they want.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top