Loughborough researchers have collaborated with international governing body giant FIFA to bring artificial pitch testing into the modern era.
As the use of artificial turf increases worldwide, colleagues from the University’s Sports Technology Institute have been selected as a key partner to develop and improve testing methods, ensuring quality and consistency is maintained throughout.
Dr. Steph Forrester, Reader in Sports Engineering and Biomechanics, explained: “FIFA put out a call for proposals to develop the next generation of mechanical test devices to access the player surface interaction on artificial turfed football pitches.
“Our knowledge and understanding of artificial turf and how it behaves under player interactions have increased and obviously technology has increased too. There’s massive scope to make these test devices much better and to bring them into the modern game.
“The common global aim for this project is to improve artificial turf surfaces for football players worldwide. For us, as researchers, it’s great to be involved in a project where we can demonstrate the impact of the research we do and for that impact to be global.”