Alloy making a racket
(Salem News)
Scripps Howard
In 1992, a pair of researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena developed a revolutionary metal alloy intended for use in rocket engines and jet aircraft - a substance stronger than steel or titanium with a remarkable ability to store and release kinetic energy. Today this futuristic material, dubbed Liquidmetal by it creators, also helps the likes of Andre Agassi and Marat Safin launch high-velocity tennis balls.
"If you look at a standard molecular structure of metal, there are gaps in it," explains Roger Petersman, the senior business manager for HEAD/Penn Racquet Sports, which introduced a line of Liquidmetal tennis racquets last summer. "When you get impact, those gaps collapse, and that takes energy out of the racquet. In Liquidmetal, there are no gaps, so all of the energy that you put into your shot, you're getting back out of it."
Liquidmetal is one of several technical innovations HEAD has brought to the game since the late 1960s, when the company branched out from its origins as a manufacturer of ski equipment and began producing professional-quality metal tennis racquets.
Delve into the design and construction of HEAD's latest models and you'll find that these intricately engineered devices bear only the most superficial resemblance to earlier wood and wood-laminate racquets, which have all but disappeared from the sport.
Like most competition-level racquets made since the 1980s, HEAD's Liquidmetal frames are made from various distinct materials bound together in a lightweight carbon fiber composite. Petersman says that after gaining exclusive rights to develop tennis racquets using Liquidmetal alloys, HEAD engineers tested the material in a range of position within the composite construction before settling on a design that includes four bands of Liquidmetal at the 2,4,8 and 10 o'clock positions around the head of the racquet.
"By putting it in those four positions, we could maximize the effect of Liquidmetal," he says. "It's basically where the ball is impacting the racquet. If you add stiffness where the ball is going to have the most impact, you're helping return more energy to the ball."
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