[robocup-small] Force vs Stroke length requirement for solenoids

[Anubhav Bhattacharjee]

Hi

I am Anubhav,a first year undergraduate from IIT Madras,Chennai,India. We
are planning to participate in next year's Robocup - small size league.
We are planning to use a kicking mechanism using solenoids to directly kick
the ball (no extra lever or other mechanism between striker and solenoid
plunger). As solenoid based linear actuators are quite widely available in
the market we were thinking of buying the same for use on our bot. However
we are not sure as to what should be the force vs stroke length requirements
of our solenoids so as to kick the ball at velocities approaching the ball
speed limit (10m/s) mentioned in the Robocup rules. Currently we were
thinking of using a high power solenoid with plunger velocity of 10m/s or
higher...
However we think that the same result can be achieved with a lower power
(and more importantly smaller) solenoid.
We would like to know the what the force vs Stroke length requirements of
the solenoid to kick the ball at the above velocities would be like...
As we are new to this arena any help or advice would be really
appreciated...

Regards
Anubhav B.
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