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Centre of percussion
Published in Paul Grimshaw, Michael Cole, Adrian Burden, Neil Fowler, Instant Notes in Sport and Exercise Biomechanics, 2019
The term “sweet spot”, which is often used in the media/sports literature to describe the centre of percussion point on a racket or bat, is not necessarily the same point as the centre of percussion. Generally, the “sweet spot”’ is described by these sources as the point that, when the ball is hit with the implement, the player is not obviously aware that any impact has taken place (i.e. it was a “smooth” or “sweet” shot). It is also inferred that, at this point, there will be minimal vibration transferred to the player’s hands/wrist or arm. The “sweet spot”, however, is what is technically termed a vibration node (a point of fundamental vibration frequency of the racket strings or frame). The centre of percussion may be a “sweet spot” but the centre of percussion can also change its position and has important implications for both performance and injury prevention. Hitting a ball at the “sweet spot” on a racket or bat is generally considered to be the point at which contact “feels” to be the best. These points can be demonstrated by the tennis racket example shown in Figure E5.5.
Acoustics of ping-pong: Vibroacoustic analysis of table tennis rackets and balls
Published in Journal of Sports Sciences, 2018
Discussions of the performance of tennis rackets and baseball bats often identify three distinct sweet spots based on three different physical phenomena: (i) the minimal initial shock location (also known as the center of percussion), (ii) the maximum coefficient of restitution location, and (iii) the minimal vibration location (Brody, 1979, 1981, 1986; Cross, 1998a, 1998b). This third definition applies most readily to table tennis rackets. Mucchi (2013) showed how the nodal lines for the first several measured mode shapes could be used to describe the minimal vibration sweet spot region for a beach tennis racket, which has a shape similar to that for table tennis.