The School of Kinesiology’s Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (HSCL) investigated new damping technology in tennis racquets as a part of a study sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods.
The study investigated how damping technology reduces unwanted vibrations in tennis racquets. Players of the University of Minnesota varsity tennis team field-tested a novel racquet, while researchers tracked their levels of muscle fatigue and measured the acceleration exerted by tennis balls when they hit the racquet. Analysis showed that acceleration energy, a marker of vibration, is reduced by about 25% at the hand of the player when using a racquet with embedded vibration-damping technology. This racquet is now used by top professional tennis players throughout the world. I-ling Yeh, a former doctoral student in HSCL now at the Singapore Institute of Technology is the first author of the paper.
