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Artificial grass: a longitudinal study on ball roll and free pile height

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conference contribution
posted on 2015-04-14, 14:37 authored by Nicholas J. McLaren, Paul FlemingPaul Fleming, Steph ForresterSteph Forrester
Ball roll is seen as one of the first criterion which cause artificial grass pitches to fail performance standards. Previous research has demonstrated that the ball roll distance increased after a seven-year period. However, there is a lack of understanding in the mechanisms causing the ball roll distance to increase with time. During this study, the ball roll distance and free pile height were measured over a twelve-month period on an indoor pitch. The aim was to evaluate the early-life pitch performance and to determine if a correlation existed between ball roll distance and free pile height. The indoor environment protected the measurements from the confounding effects of wind and precipitation, providing a controlled environment in which to assess the effects of mechanical wear from player usage on both ball roll and free pile height. There was a general trend for the ball roll distance to increase and the free pile height to reduce with time. There was a strong, negative correlation (R= -0.967) between ball roll distance and free pile height. The ball roll distance increased above the FIFA 2* limit within the first twelve months of pitch life, however intervening drag brushing the surface was found to reduce ball roll distance to within the requirements, signifying the importance of regular drag brushing. Significant spatial variation (P<0.001) existed in ball roll and free pile height between high use and low use areas of the pitch. The study provides strong evidence on the effects of free pile height on the ball roll distance, indicating that pitch owners need effective maintenance to ensure the carpet pile remains upright to maintain ball roll distance to meet performance standards.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

10th Conference of the International-Sports-Engineering-Association ENGINEERING OF SPORT 10

Volume

72

Pages

871 - 876 (6)

Citation

MCLAREN, N.J., FLEMING, P.R. and FORRESTER, S.E., 2014. Artificial grass: a longitudinal study on ball roll and free pile height. Procedia Engineering, 72, pp. 871 - 876.

Publisher

© Elsevier Ltd

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

This conference paper was published in a special issue of the journal Procedia Engineering. The issue comprises the Proceedings of the 2014 Conference of the International Sports Engineering Association: Engineering of Sport 10 held at Sheffield Hallam University on the 14th-17th July 2014. It is published by Elsevier as Open Access under a CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence.

ISSN

1877-7058

Language

  • en

Location

Sheffield Hallam Univ, Sheffield, ENGLAND

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