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Novel field equipment for assessing the stability of natural and hybrid turfs

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posted on 2018-05-29, 13:44 authored by Frazer Anderson, Paul FlemingPaul Fleming, Paul SherrattPaul Sherratt, Kathryn A. Severn
Natural turf pitches are used for many outdoor sports. Turf is a complex network of interacting organic material, soil textures and water content. Turf is susceptible to damage under large surface forces, caused by intensive player movements in rugby union and football. To assess and monitor surface stability, there needs to be a reliable test method for ground staff and other stakeholders. At present, no turf stability mechanical test method exists that represents player–surface interaction, especially to represent a linear movement across the surface such as in a rugby scrummage. This paper describes the development of a novel device for assessing turf stability. Verification was undertaken in the laboratory on a variety of controlled soil samples, and during a field study. The device measurements were shown to be sensitive to the shear strength of a high clay content soil at varying water content and to the density and type of sandy soils. A programme of field data on high quality pitches suggested a large effect of the turf root reinforcement. A conceptual model of soil failure induced by the device was developed to identify the key soil variables and support experimental data interpretation.

Funding

The project was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and Centre for Innovative and Collaborative Construction Engineering at Loughborough University for provision of a grant (number EPG037272) to undertake the research project in collaboration with Labosport UK

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Sports Engineering

Citation

ANDERSON, F.D. ...et al., 2018. Novel field equipment for assessing the stability of natural and hybrid turfs. Sports Engineering, 21 (4), pp.321–331.

Publisher

Springer Verlag (© The authors)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-05-06

Publication date

2018-05-15

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Springer under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1369-7072

Language

  • en

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