Abstract
Tennis rackets are mostly designed disregarding the boundary condition managed by the player's hand on the handle. This process leads to a lack of accuracy in the mechanical parameters the manufacturers provide to their rackets in order for them to be reliable and comfortable to the player. Our work aimed at providing a better understanding of the effect of the tennis player's hand on the racket's dynamical behavior. For this purpose, a dedicated experimental procedure involving 14 tennis players and 5 tennis rackets has been carried out. Vibrations propagated from the racket toward the upper-limb have been collected synchronously with kinematic and electromyographic data during forehands of various intensities. Additionally, an analytical model of the hand/racket interaction has been designed based on operational modal analyses. This model provides a straightforward tool to predict changes in the dynamical behavior of a tennis racket under playing conditions. Results indicated that tennis players adjust their grip-force to tune the vibrational content entering into his upper-limb. Besides, a noteworthy outcome is that grip-force induces modifications in the racket's dynamical behavior that are at least as important as the differences observed under free boundary conditions due to the rackets' own mechanical parameters.
Published Version
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