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

众所周知，参加体育运动和锻炼对普通民众的健康有重大益处。然而，这也伴随着相关的伤害风险;据估计，英格兰和威尔士每年发生2970万起运动伤害，通过治疗和损失的工作日，造成的损失为15亿英镑。比赛场地的质量对受伤风险有很大的影响，但这是一个知之甚少的领域。人造草坪运动表面正成为学校和社区中天然草坪的越来越受欢迎的替代品，因为它们对使用和气候影响具有很高的弹性。人造草坪背后的技术已经取得了显着的进步，因为早期的Astroturf在20世纪60年代到目前的第三代表面，发现在学校操场，通过专业足球比赛。尽管这种日益普及和发展的技术，人造草坪尚未充分发挥其潜力，并成为一个普遍有利的替代天然草。尽管在训练场上广泛使用，但用户仍然不愿意接受这项技术用于竞争性装置，并且认为人造草坪与更高的受伤风险有关，并且与天然草坪相比，人造草坪对身体更硬。从科学的角度来看，目前的共识表明，要充分利用人造草坪的潜在效益，需要对表面特性和人类反应之间的关系进行综合理解。本项目旨在通过进行第一次已知的调查，研究表面硬度的空间变化对人类跑步生物力学和表面感知的影响，为这种综合方法做出贡献。尽管人造草坪球场具有一致的物理外观，但由于安装程序、磨损和气候影响，其表面特性可能会出现很大的空间变化。涉及人造草坪球场表面硬度测量的现场测试将用于确定空间变化的典型幅度。这将与实验室工作相结合，参与者将在具有不同硬度空间变化的人造草坪表面上跑步。将开发一个人类跑步实验的计算机模型，以进一步了解人类反应的机制。结果将产生新的和相关的信息，人类是否以及如何调整他们的跑步技术，以科普表面硬度的变化，因此，在何种程度上这种变化需要考虑在设计和持续维护的运动表面。通过更好地理解球员与地面的相互作用，支持开发能提供更好的比赛性能和降低最终用户受伤风险的地面，将产生影响。

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.