Cricket Bat Impact Dynamics
 
 

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 This research was initiated to determine whether the traditional bat could be improved through design and the use of modern materials. Standard engineering modelling 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’? 
Bat Research Group Still from Virtual Bat, European Business News: Future File, Aug 1997. Producer: Jonathan Elliott 
Manufacturers determine the quality of a bat by the aesthetic appearance of the grain structure in the blade. The number and linearity of growth lines visible on the face and the absence of knots and other blemishes are the principal factors that determine quality.  How these affect the performance of the bat or its durability is not clear. 

A rigid model of a bat shows that in an idealized impact the final ball velocity can be expressed as twice the speed of the bat at the point of impact plus the original speed of the ball. This implies that the best place to hit the ball is low down the blade, near the toe. Anyone who has held a bat will know only too well, this is not borne out by experience. 
 
Experimentally observed Mode 3 flexural vibrations of a bat derived using the Modal Analysis technique
Flexural vibrations absorb energy during impact and this detracts from the bat's performance. Design improvements can be accurately modelled on a computer prior to construction of a prototype to provide quantifiable and verifiable changes in a bat's modal model. This is a well-defined design problem.  

While the modal model can be accurately determined, either for an actual bat or for a computer model, performance is more problematic. A reliable quantitative test procedure is required to measure it.  An impact test machine is under construction that will enable the performance of a bat to be accurately measured and compared with the computer model. 
 

Published Work
  1. Grant C. and Thethi P., Impact mechanics of bat and ball, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Experimental Mechanics, 1994, Lisbon.
  2. Grant C. and Baird A.D., Modelling for an improved cricket bat, Institute of Physics Annual Congress, Physics of Sport, Telford, 1995.
  3. Grant C. and Nixon S.A., Parametric modelling of the dynamic performance of a cricket bat, Proceedings of the International Conference on The Engineering of Sport, Sheffield, U.K., July 1996. In Haake S.(ed.), The Engineering of Sport, Balkema, Rotterdam, p254-249, 1996.
  4. Grant C. and Nixon S.A., The effect of microstructure on the impact dynamics of a cricket bat, Proceedings of the International Conference on The Engineering of Sport, Sheffield, U.K., July 1996. In Haake S.(ed.), The Engineering of Sport, Balkema, Rotterdam, p169-173, 1996.
  5. Grant C., Improved dynamic performance of a bat, Proceedings of Third International Conference on Composites Engineering, New Orleans, USA, 1996.
  6. C.Grant, P.Paisley, Raising the game through modelling, Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on Composites Engineering, Hawaii, USA, 1997. 
  7. Grant C., The role of materials in the design of an improved Cricket bat, MRS Bulletin, March 1998, Materials Research Society, Warrendale PA.
  8. Grant C., Design of a cricket bat test machine, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on The Engineering of Sport, Sheffield, U.K., July 1998. In Haake S.(ed.), The Engineering of Sport, Blackwell Science,  Oxford, p41-48, 1998.
  9. Grant C. Anderson A and Anderson J.A., Cricket ball swing-the Cooke-Lyttleton theory revisited, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on The Engineering of Sport, Sheffield, U.K., July 1998. In Haake S.(ed.), The Engineering of Sport, Blackwell Science, Oxford, p371-378, 1998.
 
 
Page Design:  Clive Grant  with  Acknowledgments. Updated: 30 July, 1998