Professor
Office: 116-200
Phone Number: 805-756-1406
Email: gmase@calpoly.edu
Research Interests
- Golf mechanics, club design, club fitting algorithms, and equipment testing
- Machine design
- Explicit finite elements with applications to impact and crash
Biography
Tom Mase joined the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Department in January 2007. He is currently a professor of mechanical engineering and Cal Poly’s Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR), overseeing academic integrity, institutional control and student-athlete well-being. Tom received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University in 1980. He obtained master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982 and 1987, respectively. At Michigan State, he played on the golf team and was co-captain his senior year.
The majority of his career has been in academia, using his mechanics background to work on applied problems in golf (and sports). Specific areas have been measuring constitutive responses of materials (golf ball covers and cores), impact modeling using finite elements, and composite materials. Representative publications include the Third Edition of Continuum Mechanics for Engineers (CRC Press), ”Modelling the Sound of a Golf Club Impact,” Proc IMechE, Part P, Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology, Sage Publishing, 226(2), 107-113, c 2012 with Cal Poly former students Volkoff-Shoemaker, Sharpe, and Moriera, and several papers on determining hyperelastic, rate-dependent properties of golf balls.
Tom stepped out of academia a couple of times to work full-time on research and design in the golf industry (Callaway and Acushnet). He continues to consult with the golf industry on research and design, and is named on six U.S. and two Japanese golf-related patents. Every fall, Tom serves as a scientific panelist on Golf Digest’s Hotlist.
Technical Papers
- Explicit FEA with boundary element method to predict sound of golf driver impact (PDF)
- Fitting golf equipment (PDF)
- Ball properties (PDF)
- Ball properties (PDF)
- Ball properties (PDF)
- Ball properties (PDF)
- Simulation of a golf robot (PDF)
- Aerodynamics of ball flight (PDF)
- Modeling Softball Bat-Ball Impact (PDF)