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

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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.