Bat With Shear-Thickening Fluid Insert
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern baseball and softball bats face challenges in maintaining consistent hitting performance across their circumference and attenuating bat-ball coefficient of restitution (BBCOR) at high speeds, leading to safety concerns and inefficiencies in energy transfer during collisions.
Innovation Solution
A bat design featuring a performance attenuating insert positioned inside the barrel, bonded to less than 360 degrees of the inner perimeter, creating a semi-circumferential gap filled with a shear-thickening fluid, which compresses at high bat-ball collision speeds to reduce the bat's trampoline effect and ensure consistent hitting characteristics.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If the bat is stiffened to reduce the trampoline effect and limit BBCOR, then player safety is improved, but bat performance at slower speeds deteriorates resulting in correspondingly slower exit speeds
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies a shear-thickening fluid in the gap between concentric tubular members that changes viscosity based on impact speed. At slower speeds, the fluid remains less viscous allowing normal energy transfer and exit speed. At higher speeds approaching safety limits, the fluid thickens to reduce the trampoline effect and attenuate BBCOR, thus dynamically adapting bat performance to different impact conditions
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the physical parameter of the fluid's viscosity in response to impact speed. The shear-thickening fluid transitions from a less viscous state at low speeds to a highly viscous state at high speeds, thereby modifying the bat's structural stiffness and energy return characteristics to simultaneously achieve safety compliance and maintain performance across different speed ranges
2Object-affected harmful factors
If multi-walled bats are used to stiffen the barrel, then the trampoline effect is reduced, but manufacturing precision deteriorates due to compounded variances in surface smoothness, ovality, straightness, concentricity, and rail thickness
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs concentric tubular members nested within each other, with an inner tubular member positioned inside an outer tubular member. This nested structure allows for controlled interaction between layers through the shear-thickening fluid, providing stiffness and trampoline effect reduction while maintaining manufacturing feasibility and consistent hitting characteristics by avoiding the compounding tolerance issues of traditional multi-walled constructions
Solution Approach 2:
The shear-thickening fluid acts as an intermediary between the concentric tubular members, allowing for controlled energy transfer and structural interaction. This fluid mediator enables the bat to achieve the desired stiffness and trampoline effect reduction without requiring extremely tight manufacturing tolerances on the tubular members themselves, thereby resolving the manufacturing precision challenge
3Stability of the object's composition
If the insert is bonded around the entire circumference of the barrel, then structural consistency is improved, but hitting performance variability increases due to manufacturing tolerances
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies the insert selectively at specific locations within the barrel rather than uniformly around the entire circumference. This localized application allows the bat to maintain structural consistency where needed while preserving consistent hitting characteristics by avoiding areas where manufacturing variances would most impact performance, thus resolving the contradiction between structural stability and hitting consistency
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The bat achieves stable and consistent hitting performance at slower speeds while attenuating performance at higher speeds, meeting safety standards and regulatory limits, thereby enhancing player safety and accuracy.
Implementation Method 1
The gap may be filled with a shear-thickening fluid that exhibits higher viscosity at higher bat-ball collision speeds
Implementation Method 2
The insert is preferably bonded or affixed to the inner surface of the barrel around less than 360 degrees of its inner perimeter
Data Source
AI summary
A ball bat includes one or more stiffeners configured to provide an attenuating surface that limits the bat barrel's elastic deformation as the barrel deflects radially inwardly as a result of a particularly violent bat to ball collision. The stiffener is spaced apart from the inner surface of the barrel a predetermined distance to form a gap, wherein the gap extends only partially around the inner circumference of the barrel. The presence of the gap extending only partially around the barrel circumference provides multiple hitting profiles around the bat's circumference, with the best performance occurring adjacent the gap, and a reduced performance at all other locations around the bat's circumference.