Effect of skirt angle and feathers formation on shuttlecock aerodynamics performance

Abstract

Aerodynamic characteristics of badminton shuttlecock are significantly different from balls used in other sports. Shuttlecock can achieve a very high initial speed and at the same time, it can decelerate very fast. This is due to the significant aerodynamic drag it experiences during its in-flight motion. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was carried out to understand the aerodynamics of a feathers shuttlecock approved by Badminton World Federation (BWF) for international tournaments. The aerodynamics performance of a standard shuttlecock at steady-state flight was investigated. The shuttlecock was assumed to be rigid and have no spin rotation; and velocity considered was 92 m/s. Effects of parameters such as angle of attack, α; angle of skirt, Ɵ; and angle of feathers, β; on the shuttlecock drag coefficient, Cd; were studied. It is found that smaller Ɵ leads to smaller Cd. Analysis shows that the Cd is the largest when the shuttlecock is at α = 0°. Besides that, the Cd is also influenced by β which the standard shuttlecock has fairly small Cd. Formation of feathers of the standard shuttlecock may be further twisted to the optimal value of β in order to increase its drag. As a result, Ɵ and β may be considered as design parameters in order to obtain the desired aerodynamics performance.