AERODYNAMICS STUDY OF THE SOCCER BALL

From the oldest times football, it has become a social phenomenon, being the most famous sport on the planet. Currently in the develop of football infrastructure is necessary to include related and direct activities such as: soccer coach, mass-media, stadium building, etc. Technological progress had also imposed itself on this game area, researching of the new materials and the manufacturing methods for the soccer ball. In this paper is presented the comparative aerodynamic CFD study of three types of ball: smooth sphere ball, Tsubasa and Pelada ball at three air velocity cases. In first part of the paper are presented the state of the art regarding the ball aerodynamics. The second part highlight the forces that act on the ball surface when it is shot by the player and the mathematical k-e standard turbulence model applied in this study. In the third part are establish the airflow regime by calculating the Reynolds number for each velocity case and the boundary conditions and the CFD simulation are done. The results are presented in the fourth part of the paper, comparing the obtained values for each simulation case. The conclusions and discussion regarding this study are presented in the last part of the paper.