Optimal design for golf club considering swing motion adjustments by the shaft variations

Abstract

'Optimal Design' and ‘Fitting’ have received a lot of attention in golf market. 'Optimal Design' is defined as tailor made design and ‘Fitting’ is defined as a service choosing the best equipment for each player. Both of them have a same problem that they are only conducted by experts called 'Fitters' who have special knowledge and experience. The one reason is golf swings are very complex motions because of motion adjustment depending on the difference of gears. Thus, fitters are required for fitting but there are not enough numbers of advanced skilled fitters. Our objective is to develop a method of optimal design considering to swing motion adjustment and to establish a fitting system of golf shaft that can be used everybody who has not special knowledge. Firstly, we evaluated the validity of the calculated swing data using Design of Experiment and Response Surface Method to achieve our goal. The accuracy rates were over 80% with 9 skilled subjects whose handy caps were less than 40 including 3 professional golfers. On the other hand, the rates of 3 beginners were under 50%. Therefore, we limited the targets of this method to skilled golfers. Additionally, we developed a fitting system to choose the best golf shaft for each player and evaluated the accuracy. As a result, 89 players in 103 ones improved their distance, direction or both, using the optimal shaft recommend by our system.

Keywords

• sport engineering
• optimal design
• finite element method
• composite material
• human dynamics