Modelling the flight of a soccer ball in a direct free kick

Abstract

Researching the aerodynamics of spinning balls in flight has traditionally been addressed using scaled models in wind tunnels or via computational fluid dynamics. This paper presented an approach which combined experimentally determined flight characteristics from swerving free kicks with a fluid dynamics model of spinning ball flight, and was the first journal paper to report field based drag and lift coefficients for a soccer ball. The work presents one aspect of soccer biomechanics research and prompted an invitation to chair the 'football symposium' at the International Society of Engineering in Sport Conference, California 2004.