Fifa World Cup 2014 is underway
and before we all are consumed by the excitement of who will win this
tournament, it appears that everyone is concerned with is the football that is
being used in the WC. The reason for such interest can partly be attributed to the football used in last WC which didn’t
really get along with all the players and Brazilian striker Luis Fabian termed
it supernatural when it came to ball’s movements. The current football is named
Brazuca, comes from Adidas and was manufactured in Pakistan.
You would be surprised to know
about the amount of effort and research put into the creation of a football for
this world famous tournament. The football is not just a sphere but also an
object whose aerodynamics needs to be studied carefully and adjustments need to
be made. The flight of a ball through the medium (air) is a study in itself
that involves aerodynamics forces and a myriad of scientific phenomena.
In simplest words; a thin layer
made of air is formed on the ball’s surface when it moves in air and this layer
is known as boundary layer, covering all of the football. The pressure
distribution on the surface can make a ball act crazy (remember the last WC?).
The toughest challenge that
Adidas faced was coming over the knuckling effect (ball hit without spin and the
path being determined by the pressure distribution). The solution was to
roughen the surface of the ball and use 6 panels while stitching the football
together.
NASA scientists at the Ames
Research Center decided to test the Brazuca and employed a wind tunnel, water
channel in collaboration with lasers and florescent dye to clearly show and
simulate the forces that were acting on the ball when it was in flight. Rabi
Mehta, Chief of the Experimental Aero-Physics Branch, said; ‘What we are
looking for in the smoke patterns is at what speed the smoke patterns suddenly
change. This is when the knuckling effect is greatest.’brazzuca being tested
The findings concluded that for
Brazuca, the optimal knuckling speed is only 30Mph whereas, the average strike
speed of a WC player is 50-55 Mph and therefore, with the restriction on
Brazuca’s knuckling speed, the ball is far more stabilized and predictable.
Mehta said; ‘the players should be happier with the new ball. It is more stable
in flight and will handle more like a traditional 32-panel ball.’aerodynamics
NASA’s team is not the only team
that has been analyzing the Brazuca, we have a team from MIT that has been scrutinizing
the ball. According to this team’s finding, the rougher surface allows this
particular ball to handle the Magnus Effect as well. For those of you who are
not aware of this phenomenon, Magnus Effect is when the ball spins in opposite
direction from where it has been shot to spin.
Source: Web
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