SYNTHETIC SURFACES
SportSURF
Sports surface research update
Loughborough University/SportSURF’s Dr Paul Fleming and SAPCA’s Dr Colin Young discuss the current activity and future challenges for SportSURF and highlight the groundbreaking research presented at the recent STARSS event
Sports and Play Construction Association (SAPCA). Its ob- jective: to bring together those engaged in sport surfaces – from research to manufacturing to construction to end users and governing bodies. After three years of govern- ment-supported research council funding, the network is now self-funding and covers a wide range of scientific research disciplines, including engineering, materials, biome- chanics, sport medicine and sport psychology to name a few. SportSURF hosts seminars and workshops that cover spe-
T
cific topics generated by the membership and stages a flagship international conference every few years called Science, Technology and Research into Sports Surfac- es or STARSS. The first STARSS event was in 2007 and the second conference was hosted by Loughborough Univer- sity last month (most presentations are viewable at
http://sportsurf.lboro.ac.uk). Sport surfaces form vital assets at leisure facilities across
the world. In England alone it’s estimated that there are approximately 84,000 sports surfaces in regular use (Sport England – Active Places Database, November 2009) – from natural turf and synthetic turf to ice rinks and indoor sports halls. The quality of thse sports surfaces can have a significant impact on the user experience – from a perfor- mance perspective – for both elite and casual users. Poor quality surfaces can disenchant users and significantly reduce participation or, at worse, lead to potential injury. Therefore, research and development is necessary to en- sure the surface meets the needs and expectations of the user – regardless of their ability. There are many different techniques that can be used to
research sport surfaces and numerous factors that need to be considered, which makes the topic truly multi-disciplin- ary and the findings relevant to many stakeholders.
The STARSS conference disseminates SportSURF research
he sport surfaces research network, SportSURF was founded in 2005 by Dr Paul Fleming of Lough- borough University and a group of like-minded researchers from leading UK institutions and the
The interactions of the user with the surface or the
ball with the surface are vital to many sports and cover disciplines as varied as biomechanics, physics and mate- rials science. In addition, the design and build quality of the surface includes many complex materials and pro- cesses that need to take into account a number of other disciplines such as geotechnical engineering, structural en- gineering and increasingly, sustainability and recycling. The conference focus was aimed at performance
and injury risk and included sessions on research and developments in natural turf, synthetic turf, environmental effects, new test methods for player shoe-surface interac- tions and the risk of injury.
Synthetic turf developments:
In the UK, there has been a real momentum behind the development of better synthetic surfaces for football and rugby – termed third generation (3G). Since its introduc- tion into the market in the late 1990s, these systems have become very popular with both sports due to the fact they are more akin to natural turf than previous sand-based
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