What are Golf Ball Dimples and How did We Get Them?
The golf ball looked very different from what we see today. They previously had goose-feather stuffing and a leather outer cover from what we know. They had a pretty cute name, “featheries”! With time, the gum of the Sapodilla tree was used to make a sphere-like shape, called “Gutta-perchas” then.
The earliest belief was that the smoother and more perfected the sphere, the farther it will travel. But the distances covered by the Gutta-perchas were much lesser than the Featheries. This then gave rise to the idea than scratched and rough surfaces make the balls travel farther than smooth ones, and by 1930, we had the dimpled golf balls.
Why do Golf Balls have Dimples?
What happens when your club hits the golf ball? Scientists have been thinking and trying to find answers to it. And from what research says about decoding a ball’s launch conditions, the tiny fraction of a second till which the impact of hit lasts on the ball is enough to determine its complete flight trajectory. That is to say, the ball’s launch angle, spin rate, velocity, etc. all depend on this little impact. Aerodynamics and gravity have full control of its trajectory, as we will decipher shortly after.
The main reason why golf balls have dimples is for this aerodynamics optimization. A dimpled one travels twice as far as the smoothed one, and this is precisely why manufacturers get the golf balls dimpled. Also, the more the surface wears out, the more nicks and cuts, the more the distances.
How Do Dimples Affect Golf Ball Flight And Aerodynamics
Why golf balls have dimples can be explained by fluid mechanics and aerodynamics.
So, how do the many dimples on a golf ball affect the flight path of the ball? For this, let us first do some basic stuff like holding out your arm, pulling it to your chest, and then holding it out again. What you felt, the swoosh, was the air resistance. The resistive force has two components, lift and drag. Drag acts opposite to your hand’s motion, while lift acts perpendicular to it. Keep moving your hand in and out, and your drag and lift vary with it.
When an object such as a golf ball moves through the air, it leaves behind a turbulent wake region and has a high-pressure front region. For the agitated air in the wake region, the pressure is low there. Air flows near the front and separated from the object at its back due to such conditions. If there are dimples on a golf ball, they create a thin and turbulent air boundary around the ball surface. For this, the air follows the surface of the ball a little farther around the back, thereby reducing the wake. The size of the aftermath has a direct relationship with the drag it faces. With a decreased wake now, the drag faced by the dimpled ball is much less; in fact, half of what is faced by smooth gold balls.
The opposite happens when you study the spinning action on golf balls: the bottom region has more air pressure than the upper region of the ball. This results in an upward force in the ball. The golf balls lift (which is upward) comes half from this spin and the other half from the dimples in it. So without the dimples, there’s just half lift.
Also, based on the aeromechanics principles, the simple pattern trend on the balls, more prominent dimples, lesser counts, and shallower depths allow the ball to travel faster and better.
How Many Dimples Does A Golf Balls Have?
The golf ball dimples’ number varies between 300 to 500. Optimally, the range is kept between 300 to 450. Above 450, the drag may be too much and below 330, unwantedly little. You can also optimize your number of dimples. There is no standard of dimple numbers a golf ball can have, so there are no magic numbers. Manufacturers pick numbers and keep them asymmetrical to stop the ball from wobbling.
Read More: https://golfshub.com/golf-ball-dimples/
This was originally published on Golfs Hub.
