NONLINEAR STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

PROJECT 1: MODELING THE HIGH-Z SHOT IN RAQUETBALL

By:

Marcor G. Platt

Submitted to:

Dr. Steven E. Benzley

BYU CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

CEEN 608 – NONLINEAR STRUCTURES

SPRING SEMESTER 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 1
PROBLEM DEFINITION ............................................................ 1
MODELING ................................................................................... 2
ANALYSIS ..................................................................................... 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .................................................... 4
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INTRODUCTION
Rubber is a very difficult material to model for several reasons. First of all, it is
an almost incompressible material, with a poisson’s ratio of about 0.49999. It has a
corresponding bulk modulus several thousand times larger than its shear modulus. Thus,
rubber and rubberlike materials are often referred to as “hyperelastic” and are analyzed
using a nonlinear analysis. Large displacements and rotations must be incorporated into
such a model. A model demonstrating these characteristics was developed using the
analysis of a hollow rubber ball contacting several surfaces. The following report
outlines the modeling, processing, and results of such an analysis.

PROBLEM DEFINITION
In the field of sports, often the main goal involves the proper handling of a
rubberlike ball. One such sport is racquetball, which involves opponents alternatively
hitting a small, hollow rubber ball against a vertical surface, called the front wall, before
the ball strikes the ground. The court consists of an enclosed, rectangular room with the
length of the room being double the height and width, and the front wall positioned at the
end of the length. The walls adjacent to the front wall are called the side walls, and the
wall opposite the front wall is called the back wall. The main strategies of racquetball
involve a player hitting the ball to rebound off the front wall at various angles and speeds,
attempting to confuse his opponent as to the ball’s response. The ball is often hit with the
intention that it will bounce off several surfaces before the opponent can get to it.
One particularly effective shot to in racquetball is known as the high-z shot. This
shot causes the ball to hit first the front wall, then a side wall, then the opposite side wall
before striking the floor (see Figure 1). This shot is particularly effective because as the
ball rebounds off the third wall, it will reverse its spin, bouncing off almost perpendicular
to the wall. In order to observe this phenomenon step by step, it was modeled and
analyzed in ADINA, where the behavior of the ball as well as the stresses during and
after contact were observed.
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Front Wall

Position of
ball when hit

Side Walls

Figure 1. Plan view of a high-Z shot.

MODELING
The model that was constructed in ADINA closely follows the diagram shown in
Figure 1. The model consists of two entities, which are the rubber ball—modeled after a
standard racquetball—and the contact walls. The rubber ball was built using the ADINA-
M tools, which allow for quick creation of three-dimensional solid bodies. The body was
created as a sphere with a diameter of 10 cm. It was then modified using another
ADINA-M tool to hollow the center, and the thickness of the outer shell was set as 1 cm.
The material properties of the rubber ball were set according to the Ogden
material model, commonly used for rubber and rubber-like materials. The material input
parameters for the model are given in Table 1. After the material model was applied to
the ball, the mesh density of the ball was set with each element having a size of about 0.8
cm. The ball was then meshed using hexahedral elements, and the resulting mesh is
shown in Figure 2.

Table 1. Ogden Material Parameters

Parameter: μ1 μ2 μ3 α1 α2 α3 κ
Value: 0.7 MPa -0.3 MPa 0.01 MPa 1.8 -1.6 7.5 1000 MPa
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Figure 2. Mesh scheme of hollow rubber ball

The three walls were modeled as 10 centimeter wide contact surfaces, with
lengths as indicated in Figure 3. The walls were subdivided to have about the same
element size as the ball (0.8 cm). They were then meshed as a single rigid contact
surface, and fixed with zero-displacement and zero-rotation boundary conditions. The
walls were located relative to the initial position of the ball as shown in Figure 3.
30 cm

70 cm

Figure 3. Position of ball with respect to walls at time 0.

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As shown in Figure 3, the model is oriented such that the ball moves in the y-z
plane. The degrees of freedom were thus set as y-translation, z-translation, as well as x-
rotation to allow the ball to spin as it bounced off the walls. The model was set to allow
for large-displacements and large-strains to account for the nonlinearity due to contact
and the properties of rubber. The most difficult point in defining the initial model was
the determination of the Coulomb friction coefficient between the ball and the walls.
Finally, it was determined that the high z-shot phenomenon could be modeled with a
friction coefficient of 0.5, and an initial rotational velocity of 10 degrees per second.

ANALYSIS
The initial velocity of the ball, as well as the size of the time steps used in the
analysis, was determined by iteration. Ultimately, the number of time steps was chosen
as 100, with a time step value of 0.02 seconds. The initial velocity of the ball was set as
just over 1 meter per second, with a direction vector -2j+k (See Figure 3). It turned out
that only about 40 to 50 time steps were needed to model the high-z shot and the
remaining time steps were discarded.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The high-z shot was successfully modeled, and the maximum effective stress was
plotted for each of the three rebounds in the shot. The third bounce had the highest
maximum stress, followed closely by the first bounce. Interestingly, the second bounce
had the lowest effective stress (see Table 2). Three videos were created which show the
path of the ball, the effective stresses in the ball as it rebounds off each wall, and the
effective stresses as it moves between surfaces. The videos follow as Figures 4, 5, and 6.

Table 2. Comparison of maximum effective stresses for the three rebounds

Rebound #: 1 2 3
σ m ax , K Pa: 192.1 175.5 198.1
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Figure 4. Raquetball path

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Figure 5. Raquetball effective stress at rebounds

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Figure 6. Raquetball effective stress between bounces