Putting a new spin on badminton aerodynamics

Badminton is the fastest racquet sport in the world. A badminton shuttlecock can exceed 200 mph in competitive play, and its distinctive shape and composition make for unique aerodynamic properties. These characteristics make studying the motion of a shuttlecock challenging, and even after decades of research, scientists do not fully understand its behavior.

One limitation is that many experimental studies involve either fixed or freely rotating shuttlecocks inside wind tunnels. Peng et al. used a motorized mount to rotate a shuttlecock at multiple set speeds to study the effects of rotation on its aerodynamic behavior.

“Treating rotation as an independently controlled variable allowed us to isolate its effects on drag, side force, rotational moment, wake momentum deficit, and turbulence at several angles of attack,” said author Zhenjun Peng.

By using particle image velocimetry, the team determined that increasing rotation induced an increased wake turbulence and momentum deficit at low to moderate angles of attack, an effect that fell off as the attack angle approached 45°.

Furthermore, the authors introduced a phased microphone array to monitor the aerodynamic sound generated by the shuttlecock in the wind tunnel. This allowed them to detect and monitor sounds produced by vortex shedding near the main shafts and binding threads of the feathers.

For future work, the researchers are considering exploring some of the aerodynamic differences between natural and synthetic shuttlecocks.

“Some players report that artificial shuttlecocks feel or fly differently from natural feather shuttlecocks, but subjective impressions alone cannot identify the underlying physical causes,” said Peng. “We want to determine whether these perceived differences can be measured and, if so, explain how the aerodynamic behavior of the two types differs.”

Source: “An aerodynamic and aeroacoustic study of a badminton shuttlecock,” by Zhenjun Peng, Runzhen Cao, Zhida Ma, Zhicheng Zhang, Peng Zhou, and Xin Zhang, Physics of Fluids (2026). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0343288 .