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好处。然而，这伴随着相关的伤害风险；据估计，英格兰和威尔士每年发生2970万起运动损伤，治疗费用和工作日损失达15亿英镑。比赛场地的质量对受伤风险有重要影响，但这是一个知之甚少的领域。由于人造草坪对使用和气候影响的高弹性，它正在成为学校和社区中越来越受欢迎的天然草的替代品。从20世纪60年代早期的阿斯特罗草皮到现在的第三代人造草皮，从学校操场到职业足球比赛，人造草皮背后的技术已经取得了显著的进步。尽管人造草坪越来越受欢迎，技术也在不断发展，但它还没有充分发挥其潜力，成为天然草的普遍替代品。尽管人工草皮在训练场上广泛使用，但用户仍然不愿意在比赛中使用这项技术，而且人们认为人造草皮与更高的受伤风险有关，而且与天然草皮相比，对身体的伤害更大。从科学的角度来看，目前的共识表明，为了充分利用人造草坪的潜在效益，需要对表面特性与人类反应之间的关系进行综合理解。本项目旨在通过对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进行已知的首次调查，为这种综合方法做出贡献。尽管具有一致的物理外观，但由于安装程序、磨损和气候影响，人造草坪球场的表面性能在空间上可能会出现很大的变化。涉及人造草坪球场表面硬度测量的现场测试将用于确定典型的空间变化幅度。这将与实验室工作相结合，参与者将在不同空间硬度变化的人造草坪表面上跑步。将开发人类运行实验的计算机模型，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，涉及人类是否以及如何调整他们的跑步技术来应对表面硬度的变化，因此，在运动表面的设计和持续维护中需要考虑这种变化的程度。通过更好地理解球员与表面的相互作用，从而支持表面的开发，从而提供更好的比赛性能并降低最终用户的受伤风险，从而产生影响。

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.