Experimental validation of a finite-element model of a tennis racket string-bed

An explicit finite-element (FE) model of a tennis racket string-bed was produced in Ansys/LS-DYNA 10.0. This model was used to simulate a range of impacts between a tennis ball and string-bed, which were validated against experimental data. The laboratory validation was undertaken by firing balls, with backspin in the range from 0 to 600 rad·s-1, from a pitching machine onto a head-clamped tennis racket. Inbound velocities and angles in the range from 20 to 30 m·s-1 and approximately 20 to 60° respectively were tested. Results were obtained for rebound spin, angle and velocity, with good agreement between the model and experiment.