Abstract
Baseball is a popular and very lucrative bat-and-ball sport that uses a wooden bat to score runs. We hypothesize that new design features for baseball bats will emerge from their shape optimization using parametric modeling and genetic algorithms. We converge the location of two points on bats made from maple (Acer sp.) and ash (Fraxinus sp.) wood that are associated with increased velocity of a ball rebounding off a bat: vibrational nodal points and the center of percussion (COP). Our modeling and optimization approach was able to reduce the distance between the nodal points and COP from 166.0 mm to 52.1 mm. This change was similar in both wood species and resulted from changes to the geometry of the bat, specifically shifting of the mass of the bat toward the center of the barrel and removing mass from the very end of the barrel. We conclude that the combination of parametric finite element modeling and optimization using genetic algorithms is a powerful tool for exploring virtual designs for baseball bats that are based on performance criteria and suggest that our designs could be realized in practice using subtractive manufacturing technology.
Highlights
We use use aa similar approach here to optimize the performance of a baseball bat, but our research differs similar approach here to optimize the performance of a baseball bat, but our research diffrom previous research on cricket bats bats because herehere we examine whether the optimal bat fers from previous research on cricket because we examine whether the optimal geometry is influenced by the wood species
100exact generations fromofthe initial design generated by Latin hydiametersampling along thetohandle and barrel with a digital Digimatic, percube the endpoint produced by the caliper genetic(Mitutoyo algorithm500-196-30 (GA) for bats made
An additional limitation of our research is that we only investigated the potential effect of a change in the bat geometry on the vibrational characteristics of the sweet spot, and we did not evaluate the effects of such changes on off-sweet-spot characteristics
Summary
We converge the location of two points on bats made from maple (Acer sp.) and ash (Fraxinus sp.) wood that are associated with increased velocity of a ball rebounding off a bat: vibrational nodal points and the center of percussion (COP). Our modeling and optimization approach was able to reduce the distance between the nodal points and COP from 166.0 mm to 52.1 mm This change was similar in both wood species and resulted from changes to the geometry of the bat, shifting of the mass of the bat toward the center of the barrel and removing mass from the very end of the barrel. The baseball bat is the key instrument used to score runs It is a tapered wooden cylinder with a button handle (knob) at the narrow end.
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