My University of Waterloo Research Project, using Ansys to model impacts between a golf ball and a rigid target.

1. FINITE ELEMENT MODELING
OF GOLF IMPACTS
April 3, 2009
Completed By: Doug Alguire
Supervisor: John McPhee

2. Construction
 Hypermesh was used to create golf ball model, then material properties
and rigid plate model were defined with batch files in Ansys 11.0
 Ball material properties and impact conditions taken from work by Tanaka
et al. [1]
Component Radius (mm) Properties
Core 17.7 Hyperelastic +Viscoelastic
Mantle 19.4 Hyperelastic +Viscoelastic
Cover 21.4 Hyperelastic
[1] Tanaka, K., Sato, F., Oodaira, H., Teranishi, Y. and Ujihashi, S. (2006). Construction of the finite- element models of golf balls and simulations of their
collisions, Proc. IMechE Vol. 220 Part L: Journal of Materials: Design and Applications, pp13-21.

3. Impact Simulations
 Normal and oblique impacts were simulated
 Oblique impacts achieved by adding z-component to initial
ball velocity (as opposed to angling the plate)

4. Normal Impact Results
 Contact time decreases with increasing initial velocity (ranged from ~0.58
to 0.64 ms, contact time for 44.4 m/s (99.3 mph) initial velocity is shown
below)
Impact

5. Normal Impact Results (Cont’d)
 The FE model results showed close agreement with the
experimental results of Tanaka et al. for all three impact
velocities studied
Experimental New FE Model
Initial Velocity
Rebound Velocity Rebound Velocity
(m/s)
(m/s) [1] (m/s)
24.9 21.1 20.9
34.5 27.9 27.8
44.4 34.2 34.1

6. Oblique Impact Results
 Simulation results and post-processing were validated by the consistency of
the post-impact angular velocity (note: angle of incidence=30°, initial
velocity=45.0 m/s)

7. Oblique Impact Results (Cont’d)
 FE model results are adequate, but tend to overestimate backspin
 Discrepancies increase at higher loft angles but remain relatively constant for
various impact velocities, suggesting that the friction model is the source of the
problem

8. Summary
 Utilized Ansys to recreate the work done by
Tanaka et al.
 Achieved a high level of agreement between FE
model and experimental results
 Further work needed to investigate the friction
model to improve oblique impact results