Measurement of the impact stress in a golf club head

We directly measured the stresses induced on impact between a golf ball and a golf club head. The strain sensors were embedded into grooves on the face of the club head. 3-axis strain sensors were able to measure one normal stress and two shear stresses at each location. The shear stress directions indicated by the outputs of the sensors were in good agreement with the direction of the ball spin obtained from high speed camera images. The peak of the normal stress and shear stress on the contact face were measured to be 4×10⁸ Pa and 1×10⁸ Pa, respectively.