Stiffness

In a previous post I talked about stiffness vs hardness, this time I will elaborate a little bit more on stiffness. “Stiffness is the extent to which an object resists deformation in response to an applied force.” The stiffness of a blade is one of the major characteristics that contributes to the speed. Are else being equal, a stiffer blade will be faster. There are two ways of increasing the stiffness in a table tennis blade:

1. by increasing the stiffness of the individual layers;

2. by increasing the overall thickness.

This is the most efficient way, but usually this also means increasing the weight. To solve this, very light cores are used. The most extreme example of this are very thick blades with a light balsa core. The balsa core just serves the purpose of increasing the distance between the outer plies, thus achieving great stiffness with a relatively low weight. This is basically the same principle used in I-beams, where most of the mass is concentrated in the flanges, while the web has very little weight.

But these kinds of blades are not for everyone. As the stiffness increases, so does the reaction of the blade, creating more speed and a flatter arc. Usually this is preferred by players that like to play close to the table and like to smash rather than spin the ball. Of course the opposite is also true, players that like to stay further away will prefer a flexier blade that provides more arc to safely clear the net.