Golf Balls + Computational Fluid Dynamics
If I had 300 hours, 500 fast processors running in parallel, and a PhD in fluid dynamics I still probably wouldn’t analyze golf balls. But a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Maryland did.
Up to now, dimple design has been more of an art than a science. For many years, sporting goods companies would design their dimple patterns by simple trial and error, testing prototype after prototype against one another. The new study takes a different approach, asking how to design dimple size and pattern based on mathematical equations that model the physics of a golf ball in flight. Working out the solution to these equations — even on the fastest personal computers today — is not feasible since it would take more than 15 years of computing time just to get a glimpse of the flow around the golf ball for a fraction of a second.
…In the end, they produced a model that reveals the physics of a flying golf ball with the greatest level of detail ever seen — the first step in achieving the project’s long-term goal of optimizing dimple design to realize the lowest drag possible. The next step, says Smith, is to extend the work by comparing different dimple designs.
Check out the video on the Newswise article page. Pretty nice.
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