Analyzing the Effect of Temperature on Squash Ball Impacts Using High-Speed Camera Recordings

Abstract

Description of the impact characteristics of different types of balls has a great importance in sport science and in engineering. The primary objective of the present paper is to investigate the effect of the temperature on the impacts of different types of squash balls from a given company. The shots were performed using a self-built air-cannon. The impacts were recorded by a high-speed camera and the recorded videos were analyzed by an image-processing method based on a background subtraction technique. Summarizing the main dynamical parameters, we can conclude that increasing the initial speed will decrease the contact time, the coefficient of restitution (COR) and the rebound resilience, whereas these parameters increase at elevated temperatures. The compression tests revealed that within the low velocity range the deformation of the ball’s material and not the compression of the inner gas is the main contribution in the force needed to compress the ball. However, when the ball suffers large deformations, the internal air pressure has a huge effect on the rebound behavior. The measurements revealed that there is an optimal initial velocity distinct from the maximum one where the rebound velocity of the ball is higher than in all other cases. From the results we can state that the ball's overall stiffness grows as the temperature increases.