Golf Club Face and Ball Impact
Where does a driver's "spring-back" actually come from — the ball or the face? This tool models both as real springs in contact: the ball's core compresses per Hertzian contact theory, and the clubface flexes per classical clamped-plate bending theory. The two act in series, sharing the same contact force but splitting the compression between them — so you can see the exact percentage split, and how it drives the resulting coefficient of restitution. Companion to Golf Club Dynamics, which uses COR to simulate ball flight, and to Golf Club Face Fracture Review, which picks up where this tool's fatigue-life estimate stops — growing an assumed crack from the peened depth to failure with Paris' Law.
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Every slider and dropdown above is reflected here — change any input and this diagram updates with it, so you can see the whole configuration at a glance instead of reading each field separately.
Shaded area = energy lost to heat; dashed line = unload path.
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Default depth (496 µm) is calibrated directly to Tyrida's own Rolls-Royce Ti64 XRD data (−826 MPa surface, −110 MPa at 1000 µm).
| Location | No LSP | With LSP (current settings) | Life Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edge (front, treated side if Front/Both selected) | — | — | — |
| Center (back, opposite side if only Front/Back selected) | — | — | — |
Try "Front only" and watch the Center row: a one-sided treatment can measurably shorten the untreated surface's life via the self-equilibrating counter-stress the compressive layer requires. Try "Both" to see why treating both sides (or reaching full depth) avoids that trade-off.
Each small chart sweeps one variable across its full slider range while holding every other input at its current value above — so you can see which variables actually move the needle on fatigue life, and which barely matter. Green = edge (front, tension near the clamp), red = center (back, tension at the impact point). Y-axis is cycles to failure, log scale. The current value of each variable is marked with a vertical line.
Modulus is the single driving term behind every result below: this sweeps face modulus E from 70% to 130% of the Ti-6Al-4V baseline (16.5 Msi) — independent of any specific named alloy — holding thickness, speed, ball, and peening settings at their current values above. Green dashed line = Ti-6Al-4V (16.5 Msi); purple dashed line = T9S+ baseline (15.0 Msi); red dashed line = whatever modulus is currently active above (including a custom override, if enabled).
▸ Detailed analysis — methodology and equations
This tool models the ball and clubface as two springs in series — Hertzian contact for the ball, clamped circular plate bending for the face — to compute COR, peak force, and fatigue life via Goodman + Basquin. See the Golf Analysis Tools User Handbook for how to use this tool's inputs and outputs.