Proceedings of the
International Conference on Mechanical Engineering 2009
(ICME2009) 26- 28 December 2009, Dhaka, Bangladesh

ICME09-FM-23

AERODYNAMICS OF FOOTBALLS

Firoz Alam, Harun Chowdhury, Christopher Whyte and Aleksandar Subic
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, Australia

ABSTRACT

Ball sports are becoming faster and more demanding than ever before, pushing traditional ball designs to their limits. In order to meet the increasing performance requirements, the ball manufacturers are producing new designs that can display better aerodynamic performance, geometric symmetry and balance. Since the inception of football game-the most popular and widely played game in the world, the centre piece of the game- the spherical ball which has gone through significant structural changes over the decades. A traditional spherical ball made of 32 leather panels stitched together in 1970s has now become only 14 synthetic curved panels thermally bonded (without stitches). Currently Adidas, the official supplier and manufacturer of footballs to FIFA is believed to be more spherical and it performs more uniformly regardless of where it is hit. Therefore, the primary objectives of this study were to evaluate aerodynamic performances of a current Adidas 14 curved panel football ball and a traditional Nike made 32 leather panels football ball. The aerodynamic forces and moments were measured experimentally for a range of wind speeds (20 km/h to 130 km/h) and the non-dimensional drag coefficient was determined and compared
 

Keywords: Aerodynamics, Football, Wind Tunnel, Drag Coefficient.

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