Neeraj Gadi
Tanmay Singh Thakur

Dr Ravi Inder Singh

Shuttlecocks used in badminton are rather fascinating. Despite weighing just five grams, a shuttlecock experiences a substantial rate of deceleration in flight due to its aerodynamically blunt shape. Unlike other racquet sports, the projectile of a shuttlecock is indicative of some unique flight
characteristics. It has a very high drag coefficient, which decelerates the shuttlecock to a great extent during flight. Interestingly, it follows a highly skewed trajectory – the angle at which it falls is much steeper than the angle at which it rises. Wind tunnel measurements also reveal that there is
no lift component of force on a shuttlecock when its axis of symmetry is aligned with the direction of velocity.

There happens to be a lot of published research on the flip mechanism, the spin variation of a shuttlecock, the stabilization time, and on shuttlecock trajectories for different types of shots played. This paper aims at conducting basic CFD Simulations on ANSYS Fluent and understanding the dynamics of airflow around a badminton shuttlecock. Simulations were performed and analyzed for three different shuttlecock models – Solid Cone (as control), Synthetic and Feather Shuttlecocks. All simulations were performed using standard K-w, SST Turbulence Model. Synthetic shuttlecocks have holes on its skirts which contributes to the drag, and the effect of changing the hole patterns on drag coefficient was also studied.