Engineers Develop Impact Testing Device To Examine Sports Fields!
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Bruises and injuries are part and parcel of an athlete's life. If you are playing a game, you are going to suffer from an injury sometime or the other, mostly while hitting the ground. This results in too much loss of energy, if not an injury. Cranfield University Sports engineers have examined a device that can analyze the mechanical properties of natural turf in an effort to  understand athlete–surface interactions in a better way. Researchers claim that advanced knowledge of these interactions could assist in preventing injuries and aid athlete performance. Wastage of impacting energy and decrease of loads returned to athletes is considered as important for preventing injuries, while stiffness and energy return from sports surfaces permits athletes to execute movements more efficiently, with a compromise often looked for between the two.
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ImageSource: agentorange.co.uk
Dr Matt Caple of Cranfield, who collaborated on the recent project said, "One of the main issues is that the new modern, elite-level surfaces are made of sand and their properties are a lot stiffer compared with the average Sunday kick-about pitch. With this device we’re trying to assess how the surface reacts to stresses applicable to athletes, in terms of how much it compresses and the energy it absorbs."
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After prohibiting artificial pitches in the early 1990s, football’s ruling body FIFA has lately authorized a motion allowing them in competitive matches, but with strict demands that have to be met. It has created an ‘artificial athlete’ examining device to make sure the pitch surfaces bind to certain mechanical parameters. Caple still noted that a similar system is presently lacking for natural turfs, which demands a different approach in terms of measurement.
His answer was a vertical dynamic impact-testing device (DST) comprising of a compressed air-driven ram that vertically hits a studded test foot onto the surface, utilizing data from biomechanical studies. It was earlier constructed for measuring horse racing but was found to be undesirable and another Cranfield-developed device, the GoingStick, was finally formulated and commercially took over for this purpose. "While the GoingStick measures the actual strength of the surface, the DST measures energy absorption, so we’ve taken this device, developed it and put more components on it, then modeled it against a biomechanical study of players running on turf."
Caple’s team has simply demonstrated data collected from the DST on professional rugby and football pitch-testing studies over two seasons. "What we found was that sand surfaces are more consistent across the season compared with more clay or silt-dominated soils. Because the infiltration rate of the soil [is lower], the strength isn't as reliant upon moisture content so it doesn’t deform as much when it’s loaded." Caple wishes to execute further studies on his DST and maybe commercialize it for suggesting on the installation of new turfs or re-surfacing.
Bruises and injuries are part and parcel of an athlete's life. If you are playing a game, you are going to suffer from an injury sometime or the other, mostly while hitting the ground. This results in too much loss of energy, if not an injury. Cranfield University Sports engineers have examined a device that can analyze the mechanical properties of natural turf in an effort to  understand athlete–surface interactions in a better way. Researchers claim that advanced knowledge of these interactions could assist in preventing injuries and aid athlete performance. Wastage of impacting energy and decrease of loads returned to athletes is considered as important for preventing injuries, while stiffness and energy return from sports surfaces permits athletes to execute movements more efficiently, with a compromise often looked for between the two.
#-Link-Snipped-#
ImageSource: agentorange.co.uk
Dr Matt Caple of Cranfield, who collaborated on the recent project said, "One of the main issues is that the new modern, elite-level surfaces are made of sand and their properties are a lot stiffer compared with the average Sunday kick-about pitch. With this device we’re trying to assess how the surface reacts to stresses applicable to athletes, in terms of how much it compresses and the energy it absorbs."
</div>
After prohibiting artificial pitches in the early 1990s, football’s ruling body FIFA has lately authorized a motion allowing them in competitive matches, but with strict demands that have to be met. It has created an ‘artificial athlete’ examining device to make sure the pitch surfaces bind to certain mechanical parameters. Caple still noted that a similar system is presently lacking for natural turfs, which demands a different approach in terms of measurement.
His answer was a vertical dynamic impact-testing device (DST) comprising of a compressed air-driven ram that vertically hits a studded test foot onto the surface, utilizing data from biomechanical studies. It was earlier constructed for measuring horse racing but was found to be undesirable and another Cranfield-developed device, the GoingStick, was finally formulated and commercially took over for this purpose. "While the GoingStick measures the actual strength of the surface, the DST measures energy absorption, so we’ve taken this device, developed it and put more components on it, then modeled it against a biomechanical study of players running on turf."
Caple’s team has simply demonstrated data collected from the DST on professional rugby and football pitch-testing studies over two seasons. "What we found was that sand surfaces are more consistent across the season compared with more clay or silt-dominated soils. Because the infiltration rate of the soil [is lower], the strength isn't as reliant upon moisture content so it doesn’t deform as much when it’s loaded." Caple wishes to execute further studies on his DST and maybe commercialize it for suggesting on the installation of new turfs or re-surfacing.
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