A comparative study of feather and synthetic badminton shuttlecock aerodynamics

Badminton is a high drag game. The aerodynamic properties of badminton shuttlecocks are complex. As a bluff body, the shuttlecock generates high aerodynamic drag and steep flight trajectory. Although a series of studies on aerodynamic behaviour of spherical and ellipsoidal balls have been reported in the open literature, scant information is available in the public domain about the aerodynamic behaviour of badminton shuttlecocks. The primary objective of this work was to evaluate aerodynamic properties of a series of shuttlecocks under a range of wind speeds. The non-dimensional drag coefficient was determined and compared. The natural feather shuttlecock displayed lower drag coefficient at low speeds and significantly higher drag at high speeds. On the other hand, the synthetic shuttlecock demonstrated the opposite trends.