The use of geometrical simplification to model natural fibre composites.

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

Performance benchmarking allows the sports engineer to determine a deeper understanding of the properties and performance of the equipment being studied. The rationale for this is often to enable the replacement of some aspect of the design or improvement of the materials or a combination of these. For the sport of polo high ranked players prefer traditional, natural material constructions and the replacement of these with advanced composites or metallic blends is being met with much resistance. One of the overarching factors driving the need to develop materials in this sport is due to governmental mandates and the reduction in forests that produce the appropriate genus of cane, calamus manau rattan, desired by the highest ranked players. The early results of surveys being taken by the polo community are indicating that the biggest challenge to innovation of the mallet is due to a combination of the factors,traditionality and subjectivity. The natural cane used in the shafts performs unlike any other material and because of this the feel and response of the equipment is likewise unique. As well as this there is also the consideration that the forcesthat can be applied by the player to the ball are below those that might otherwise cause injury to the horse. In this work we deconstruct the cane in order to model the geometry in an effort to identify what enables the unique response of the natural composite. Once this is complete the adaptation of a predictive modelling approach previously developed to predict the mechanical response of both thermoset and thermoplastic composites is considered. Mechanical test results are also compared