Things like Badminton rackets, Tennis rackets, golf clubs, softball bats and hockey sticks. I know its light and all but what are the other reasons why is it used as a stick to hit objects? Can someone give me a detailed answer? Edit: Is tensile strength an important factor to making these sticks if so why?
In: Engineering
Carbon fiber is light, but strong. If your Hitting Thingy is heavy, then you’ll get tired much more quickly from swinging it around. If your Hitting Thingy is weak, then it’ll break from you hitting things with it. Carbon fiber solves both of those problems.
Carbon fiber has multiple application. It is used because of its light weight and extreme durability.
That’s basically it. Carbon fiber is light and ridgid. Player’s strength and dexterity are wasted less on handling the equipment. Therefore, more energy or fine adjustment makes it to the ball, birdie, or puck. This is similarly true of cars, planes, and tools.
Think of it this way: would you rather swing a one-pound racket or a ten-pound racket? Would you rather the engine push a half-ton vehicle or a two-ton vehicle? What’s more maneuverable, a 500-pound plane or a 5,000-pound plane?
Concrete is very strong in compression, but only worth 10% of it’s strength in tension. That’s why it’s easy to bust a chunk of concrete, because when you bend it, you compress one face and stretch the other.
That’s why we put steel in Concrete. It has a really high tensile strength, and prevents the block of concrete from pulling apart, making it super strong. But steel and concrete are really heavy. Steel is strong, but not really all that strong when you break it down to thicknesses measured in micro-millimeters.
Carbon Fiber on the other hand is CRAZY strong. But it’s also really thin, so it behaves more like rope or string. Great in tension, but not good for pushing on.
So, you surround the Carbon Fiber in something flowable and rigid like Concrete. In sports equipment, that’s usually some kind of plastic epoxy thing that can be engineered with exact hardness vs bendiness specifications. The Carbon Fiber will make sure it never breaks or cracks, and will fit whatever form you put it in.
dont discount that CF looks cool and has great public opinion.
Yes, it has plenty of positive physical properties, but in some cases, its used in all the wrong ways on cheap products just because its tantamount to painting a sports car red.
In some cases, its just a fake film applied over another cheaper material to look like Carbon fiber.
At this point, even if you had a superior material to use, you might forgo it because the market would likely not value it.
To answer your edit that you asked again multiple times in the replies, tensile strength is important in that you don’t want your stick to break. Specifically, you don’t want it to break when flexed, and more strength means more force can be applied before breaking.
It’s not the tensile strength they’re really after with the carbon fiber though, it’s the stiffness. Stiffness in materials science refers to a material’s resistance to bending. If I have to put a lot of force to get a little bending, my material is stiff. This is really important for stuff like golf clubs and hockey sticks, because if my stick is really stiff, a little bit of flex absorbs a lot of force. When the flex is released (ie: when the ball or puck is hit), that force is transferred to the object, making it fly faster and further.
You can see how important that bending is in [videos like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz_4i1e6ppM). Carbon fiber is among the stiffest materials in the world (along with being lightweight and strong).
Carbon Fiber also has some great energy transfer properties. In the skating world, the amount of energy your foot can transfer to the ice greatly differs by the materials between your actual feet and the actual ice. So using full one piece carbon skates (relatively new to hockey and figure skating, but been around for over 20 years in speed skating) has led to much higher levels of efficiency. I can elaborate more on this if anyone is interested since this is my field of work.
One important aspect of carbon fiber (its actually colloqiual shorthand for something like “carbon fiber reinforced polymer”) I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the fact that it is a composite material.
Composites can combine some of the properties of its constituents and can be tuned more than homogeneous materials. Carbon fibers are woven together in strands/sheets and encased in a polymer of some kind (epoxy etc). The fibers can provide rigidity in specific directions while the polymer keeps the fibers from buckling. Different weaves of fibers and polymers can be chosen, combined in different ratios, patterns, directions, shapes etc. etc. to create materials with a large range of properties. Parts of the overall product can be finely-tuned in this way: head of a raquet vs the handle, seatstays vs chainstays on a bicycle etc. All of this contributes to weight savings as well.
I have a few carbon fiber hockey sticks. They are WONDERFUL. Jumping over a 3 foot wall and carrying it around for 2 hours you’d be surprised at how much shaving a bit of weight off helps things. Not like a standard stick is heavy but these carbon fiber ones are stupid light, like unbelievably light. They are expensive though, I got lucky and got a few from a neighbor who is an equipment manager for a pro team. My goalie stick s worth like $450 and my regular sticks are $300+ compared to about $100 for a standard pretty decent stick.
Someone else mentioned it but besides being lighter, it doesn’t transmit the shock of the impact to your joints like steel or aluminum will. The reality is any athlete can hold a hollow metal bat without any sort of challenge to their strength. Bat something with metal and then carbon fiber, you will notice a big difference. This is one reason carbon fiber is nice for road bicycles, it is strong, that it will not break, while flexing under you. The reason for this is while metals have atoms lined up in a crystalline formation, which gives it strength, that thing that gives it strength makes it extremely rigid. Carbon fiber is made up by many sheets of carbon, which can flex under load and return to the original shape after the load is gone.
Have you ever seen a picture of a glider landing? The wings look like they are bent in the middle!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC2yCoBQfDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC2yCoBQfDA)
So, if that was traditional aluminum that force would be transmitted into the fuselage of the aircraft, which in that application would be undesirable. Quick note, most gliders are composite fiberglass, not carbon fiber, but it is the same basic idea. In fact, the 787 and a350 use carbon fiber extensively both for its weight savings, strength, and the ability to flex under load.
So, if you have a composite bat, and you are hitting baseballs all day, the energy that is absorbed by the bat by flexing and returning to normal shape, that is not being absorbed by your joints, will reduce fatigue and injury in the athlete.
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