Running on uncertain ground: a step towards improved artificial turf playing surfaces

Participation in sport and exercise is known to have significant health benefits for the general population. However this comes with an associated injury risk; it has been estimated that 29.7 million sports injuries occur annually in England and Wales at a cost, through treatment and lost working days, of 1.5 billion. The quality of a playing surface has a significant effect on injury risk, yet this is a poorly understood area. Artificial turf playing surfaces are becoming an increasingly popular alternative to natural grass in schools and communities due to their high resilience to usage and climate effects. The technology behind artificial turf has advanced significantly since the early days of Astroturf in the 1960s to the current third generation surfaces that are found in school playgrounds through to professional football matches. Despite this increasing popularity and developing technology, artificial turf has yet to fully realise its potential and become a universally favourable alterative to natural grass. There remains reluctance by users to embrace the technology for competitive fixtures despite widespread use in training grounds, and a perception that artificial turf is related to a higher injury risk and is harder on the body compared to natural grass. From the scientific perspective, current consensus suggests that for the potential benefits of artificial turf to be fully exploited, an integrated understanding of the relationship between surface properties and human response is needed.This project aims to contribute to this integrated approach through conducting the first known investigation into the effects of spatial variation in surface hardness on human running biomechanics and perception of the surface. Despite a consistent physical appearance, artificial turf pitches can exhibit substantial spatial variation in surface properties due to installation procedures, wear and climatic effects. Field tests involving surface hardness measurements for an artificial turf pitch will be used to determine typical magnitudes of spatial variation. This will be combined with laboratory work in which participants will run on artificial turf surfaces with different spatial variations in hardness. A computer model of the human running experiments will be developed to provide further insight to the mechanics of the human response. The results will generate novel and relevant information relating to whether, and how, humans adapt their running technique to cope with the surface hardness variability and, therefore, the extent to which this variability needs to be considered in the design and ongoing maintenance of sports surfaces. Impact will come through a better understanding of the player-surface interaction supporting the development of surfaces that give better playing performance and reduced injury risk for end users.

This project will support the development of better performing and safer sports surfaces. The focus is on running on 3G artificial turf systems, however the study design is such that the results, and impact, can extend across many activities (both sport and recreational) and surface systems (sports and everyday). The principal beneficiaries will be the users of artificial turf facilities, from recreational users in schools and communities through to professional sportsmen and women. Impact will come through the knowledge supporting the development and maintenance of artificial turf facilities that better support human performance. Impact will extend to the National Health Service through the potential reduction in injury risk for users resulting from the improvements to playing surfaces and through the consequent increased adherence to a physically active lifestyle. To ensure that impact is maximised, a key group of beneficiaries are those organisations involved in setting regulations and standards relating to installation and maintenance of artificial turf facilities, notably the British and European Standards Committees. The knowledge gained will support the review of current standards and practices, a process which will underpin the performance improvements, e.g. whether the six spatial locations specified in the FIFA Quality Standards are sufficient, best located and the quoted range of values appropriate in the optimisation of artificial turf for human performance. Further impact will extend to those companies involved in the manufacture, supply, installation and maintenance of artificial turf facilities through improvements supporting the rising demand for these facilities. The results of this study will have validity across a wide range of surface systems beyond 3G artificial turfs, particularly to those surfaces which demonstrate similar spatial variability in mechanical properties to those investigated here. Thus, impact may extend to other surfaces industries, where some of the knowledge gained can be directly transferred and used by the equivalent organisations to those identified above for artificial turfs. To maximise impact a number of activities are proposed. The project output will be presented at the 2012 annual Easter SportSURF workshop to be held at Loughborough University. This event is well attended by the sports surfaces community providing the opportunity for dissemination to a number of influential principal beneficiaries. Being local, it will present further opportunities with key beneficiaries to demonstrate the Principal Investigators research capabilities in sports surfaces, e.g. through tours of the 15M Sports Technology Institute. The output will be disseminated at the 2012 SAPCA annual conference which is well supported by the industry (over 200 delegates). The Principal Investigator and Research Associate will attend this conference to talk with delegates and distribute publicity material. A project microsite will be developed within the Principal Investigators University website containing the background, links to project partner websites, weekly progress updates and other dissemination reports. It is expected to remain a live archive throughout the expected exploitation timescale (5 - 15 years) by acting as part of the Principal Investigators wider research dissemination strategy. Finally, to ensure that the expertise of external project partners relating to impact opportunities is captured, specific planning of dissemination activities will be an agenda item at project review meetings.