Golf Club Head Flexure Design for Impact Energy Transfer
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional golf club heads face challenges in achieving a larger 'sweet zone' with uniform high initial ball speed due to variations in impact location on the club face, leading to inefficient energy transfer and reduced distance, while also being vulnerable to failure from thinner faces.
Innovation Solution
The golf club head incorporates a flexure design that alters compliance characteristics by including a transmittal portion, a flexure, and a rear portion, with the flexure spaced aftward of the ball-striking surface to allow for increased face deformation and energy transfer, reducing backspin and enhancing ball speed across a larger area of the club face.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by moving object
If the club face is made thinner to maximize coefficient of restitution and ball speed, then energy transfer efficiency improves, but structural integrity and resistance to permanent deformation deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the material parameter of the club face from conventional metal to a polymer material with specific viscoelastic properties. This allows the face to be thinner while maintaining structural integrity through the material's inherent toughness and energy absorption characteristics, resolving the contradiction between thin face design for energy transfer and structural strength requirements
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs a composite construction with a polymer face material that combines viscoelasticity and toughness. This composite approach enables the club face to exhibit both the flexibility needed for high coefficient of restitution and the strength required to resist permanent deformation, simultaneously achieving both improving and preventing objectives
2Speed
If the club face is made thinner to increase ball speed, then energy transfer improves, but vulnerability to failure from impact loads increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent modifies the material parameters by selecting a polymer with optimized viscoelastic properties that allow the face to be thinner while maintaining reliability. The viscoelastic material can undergo larger elastic deformations without permanent damage, enabling thinner design that achieves higher ball speed while resisting impact failure
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a flexible polymer face that can elastically deform under impact loads and return to its original shape. This flexible shell approach allows the club face to be thinner for improved ball speed while the elastic recovery mechanism ensures reliability by preventing permanent deformation and failure under repeated impact conditions
3Loss of energy
If face deformation is increased to reduce viscoelastic relaxation losses, then energy transfer efficiency improves, but club head vibration increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent optimizes the viscoelastic parameters of the polymer material to achieve a balance where sufficient deformation occurs to minimize relaxation losses, while the material's damping characteristics simultaneously control harmful vibrations. The loss tangent and other viscoelastic parameters are selected to convert vibrational energy into heat rather than allowing it to propagate
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the potentially harmful vibration energy into beneficial thermal energy through the viscoelastic damping mechanism. The polymer material's internal friction transforms vibrational kinetic energy into heat during deformation cycles, reducing the amplitude and duration of club head vibrations while maintaining efficient energy transfer to the ball
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 flexure design enhances ball speed and distance by reducing backspin and increasing the 'sweet zone' of the club face, while maintaining structural integrity and durability, allowing for more efficient energy transfer and improved performance on off-center impacts.
Implementation Method 1
the rate of deformation must be reduced. This may be accomplished by allowing more club face deformation during impact. Since metallic deformation may be purely elastic, the strain energy stored in the club face is returned to the ball after impact thereby increasing the ball's outbound velocity after impact.
Implementation Method 2
Viscoelastic relaxation is a material property of the polymeric materials used in all manufactured golf balls. Viscoelastic relaxation of the ball is a parasitic energy source, which is dependent upon the rate of deformation. To minimize this effect, the rate of deformation must be reduced.
Data Source
AI summary
A golf club head including a crown, a sole, a hosel, a face and a flexure. The flexure provides compliance during an impact between the golf club head and a golf ball, and is tuned to vibrate, immediately after impact, at a predetermined frequency. A slot is included in a portion of the golf club head and works with the flexure to further tune performance.