Statistical Analysis of Table-Tennis Ball Trajectories

In this work, the equations of motion for table-tennis balls were numerically solved on graphics processing units (GPUs) using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) for systematical statistical studies of the impact of ball size and weight, as well as of net height, on the distribution functions of successful strokes. Half a billion different initial conditions involving hitting location, initial spin, and velocities were analyzed to reach sufficient statistical significance for the different cases. In this paper, an advanced statistical analysis of the database generated by the simulation is presented.