Artificial turf
Artificial turf, Astroturf, or synthetic turf, is a man-made surface manufactured from synthetic made to look like natural grass. It is most often used in arenas for sports that were originally or are normally played on grass. However, it is now being used on residential lawns and commercial applications as well. The main reason is maintenance—artificial grass resists heavy use (such as sports) better, and requires no irrigation.
Background
David Chaney—who moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1960 and later served as dean of the North Carolina State University College of Textiles—headed the team of RTP researchers who created the notable artificial turf. That accomplishment led Sports Illustrated to declare Chaney as the man "responsible for indoor major league baseball and millions of welcome mats." Artificial turf first came to prominence in 1965, when AstroTurf was installed in the newly-built Astrodome in Houston, Texas. The use of AstroTurf and similar surfaces became widespread in the 1970s and was installed in both indoor and outdoor stadiums used for baseball and gridiron football in the United States and Canada. Maintaining a grass playing surface indoors, while technically possible, is prohibitively expensive, while teams who chose to play on artificial surfaces outdoors did so because of the reduced maintenance cost, especially in colder climates with urban multi-purpose "cookie cutter" stadiums such as Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium and Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium.
Applications
Association football
 | It has been suggested that FIFA Recommended 1-Star and FIFA Recommended 2-Star be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since August 2009. |
Some association football (soccer) clubs in Europe installed artificial surfaces in the 1980s, which were called plastic pitches (often derisively) in countries such as England. In England several professional club venues had adopted the pitches, QPR's Loftus Road, Luton Town's Kenilworth Road, Oldham Athletic's Boundary Park and Preston's Deepdale until the English FA banned them in 1988. Artificial turf gained a bad reputation on both sides of the Atlantic with fans and especially with players. The first artificial turfs were a far harder surface than grass, and soon became known as an unforgiving playing surface which was prone to cause more injuries, and in particular, more serious joint injuries, than would comparatively be suffered on a grass surface. Artificial turf was also regarded as aesthetically unappealing to many fans.
In 1981, London football club Queens Park Rangers dug up its grass pitch and installed an artificial one. Others followed, and by the mid-1980s there were four plastic grass pitches in operation in the English league. They soon became a national joke: the ball pinged round like it was made of rubber, the players kept losing their footing, and anyone who fell over risked carpet burns. Unsurprisingly, fans complained that the football was awful to watch and, one by one, the clubs returned to natural grass.
— [1]
In the 1990s many North American football clubs also removed their artificial surfaces and re-installed grass, while others moved to new stadiums with state-of-the-art grass surfaces that were designed to withstand cold temperatures where the climate demanded it. The use of artificial turf was later banned by FIFA, UEFA and by many domestic soccer associations, though, in recent years, both governing bodies have expressed resurrected the use of artificial surfaces in competition provided that they are FIFA Recommended. UEFA has now been heavily involved in programs to test artificial turf with tests made in several grounds meeting with FIFA approval. A team of UEFA, FIFA and German company Polytan conducted tests in the Stadion Salzburg Wals-Siezenheim in Salzburg, Austria which is due to have matches played on it in the UEFA EURO 2008. It is the second FIFA 2 Star approved turf pitch in a European domestic top flight, after Dutch club Heracles Almelo received the FIFA certificate in August last year.[2] The tests were approved.[3]
Football pitch developments
In the early 21st century, new artificial playing surfaces using sand and/or rubber infill were developed. These "next generation" or "third generation" artificial grass surfaces are generally regarded as being about as safe to play on as a typical natural grass surface — perhaps even safer in cold conditions.
Many clubs have installed the new synthetic grass surfaces, most commonly as part of an all-weather training capability. Other clubs which have maintained natural grass surfaces are now re-considering artificial grass. With football clubs in Europe looking to reduce both the maintenance costs and the number of winter matches that are cancelled due to frozen pitches, the issue has also been re-visited by that sport's governing bodies.
The Scottish Premier League banned synthetic pitches for competition matches in 2005, following a two year experiment by Dunfermline Athletic who installed XL Turf, made by the Swiss firm, XL Generation. The management of Dunfermline were happy with the surface, but the league banned the use of the artificial pitch due to complaints by visiting clubs such as Rangers and Celtic.
"The most common type uses polypropylene "grass" about 5 centimetres long, which is lubricated with silicone and tufted into a primary cloth and then latex is applied to the back of the cloth to give it stability by anchoring in the tufts. The whole thing is then "infilled" with a 4-centimetre layer of sand and rubber granules, which keeps the fibres upright and provides the right level of shock absorbency and deformability. The majority of the 15 or so turf manufacturers approved by FIFA use this technology.
The other sort, typified by Dunfermline's pitch, has a base of expanded polyethylene, a foamy material originally developed as a shock absorber for the car industry (see diagram). The grass is also made of lubricated polyethylene fibres, but they are shorter and more densely packed than on an infilled pitch, and are also interspersed with short, curly, spring-like fibres that keep the blades upright. The finishing touch is an 8-millimetre filling of rubber granules."
[1]The installation at the Borussia-Park in Mönchengladbach is another major step in the quality and development of artificial turf surfaces.
— [4]
UEFA later announced that starting from the 2005-06 season, approved artificial surfaces were to be permitted in their competitions.
Regardless of the views of the governing bodies, criticism of artificial surfaces in soccer continues, notably in reference to the FieldTurf surface at Toronto F.C.'s BMO Field and the Giants Stadium home of Red Bull New York. Current and former players have recently criticised the surface, expressing concerns that, among other things, it may exacerbate injuries.
A full international fixture for the 2008 European Championships was played on 17 October 2007 between England and Russia on an artificial surface, which was installed to counteract adverse weather conditions, at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.[5][6] It was one of the first full international games to be played on such a surface approved by both FIFA and UEFA. However UEFA ordered that the 2008 European Champions League final hosted in the same stadium in May 2008 must take place on grass, so a temporary natural grass pitch was installed just for the final. UEFA stressed that artificial turf should only be considered an option where climatic conditions necessitate.[7]
In June 2009, following a match played at Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in Costa Rica, American national team manager Bob Bradley called on FIFA to "have some courage" and ban artificial surfaces.[8]
American football
- In 1969, Franklin Field — the football stadium of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — switched from grass to artificial turf. Also home of the Philadelphia Eagles, it was the first National Football League stadium to use artificial turf.
Field hockey
The introduction of synthetic surfaces has significantly changed the sport of field hockey. Since being introduced in the 1970s, competitions in western countries are now mostly played on artificial surfaces. This has increased the speed of the game considerably, and changed the shape of hockey sticks to allow for different techniques, such as reverse stick trapping and hitting. Due to the cost of synthetic pitch installation, India and Pakistan have lost their once dominant position in international competition.
Field hockey artificial turf differs from soccer and football artificial turf in the way that it does not try to reproduce a grass 'feel', being made of shorter fibres similar to the ones used on Dunfermline's pitch. This shorter fibre structure allows the improvement in speed brought by earlier artificial turfs to be retained. This development in the game is however problematic for many local communities who often cannot afford to build two artificial pitches: one for field hockey and one for other sports. The FIH and manufacturers are driving research in order to produce new pitches that will be suitable for a variety of sports.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Unfilled | Often called "water-based", the pile is unfilled. The pitches require wetting, hence the name "water-based", often via prolonged showering with pitch-side water cannon prior to their use and occasionally during half-time intervals depending on the prevailing atmospherics. They are favoured by most sports since they offer more protection for players by minimising the abrasive effect created by the sand. These pitches form the majority of the elite level field hockey pitches in use today. |
| Sand-dressed | The pile of the carpet is filled to within 5-8 mm of the tips of the fibre with fine sand. The sand cannot be seen. It can be confused with unfilled pitches. |
| Sand filled | The pile of the carpet is filled almost to the top with sand. The sand makes the pitch rough and harder. In comparison to water-based pitches or minimal sand-dressed pitches, ball speed across the surface is often noticeably slower. |
Ski and snowboard
Some ski and snowboard clubs and resorts in Europe installed artificial surfaces in the 1960s and 1970s. Often called pista del sole, after its ability to be used in warm, sunny, conditions, these installations have become increasingly uncommon.
Tennis
Landscaping
Since the early 1990s, the use of synthetic grass has moved rapidly beyond athletic fields to residential and commercial landscaping artificial lawns. This trend has been driven primarily by two functions: the quality and variety of synthetic grasses that are available has improved dramatically, and cities and water conservation organizations have begun realizing the value of artificial grass as a conservation measure. It also requires less maintenance and care.
Advantages and disadvantages
Advantages
- Artificial turf can be a better solution when the environment is particularly hostile to natural grass. An arid environment or one where there is little natural light are examples.
- Artificial turf can withstand significantly more use than natural grass and can therefore be used much more frequently. This allows sports ground owners to generate more income from their facilities.
- Ideal for holiday homes when maintenance of lawns is not practical. It is also a solution for elderly homeowners who find the upkeep of lawns too much hard work.
- Suitable for roof gardens and swimming pool surrounds.
- Some artificial turf systems allow for the integration of fiber-optic fibers into the turf. This would allow for lighting or advertisements to be directly embedded in a playing surface, or runway lighting to be embedded in artificial landing surfaces for aircraft.[9]
Disadvantages
- Abrasion injuries caused by artificial turf have been linked to a higher incidence of MRSA infections[10].
- Some artificial turf requires infill such as silicon sand and/or granulated rubber made from recycled car tires. This material may carry heavy metals which can leach into the water table.[11]
- Periodic disinfection is required as pathogens are not broken down by natural processes in the same manner as natural turf. Despite this, recent studies suggest certain microbial life is less active.[12]
- Turf toe is a medical condition which is often associated with playing on artificial turf pitches.
- Friction between skin and artificial turf causes abrasions and/or burns to a much greater extent than natural grass.[12] This is an issue for some sports: for example, football in which sliding maneuvers are common and clothing does not fully cover the limbs. However, with some third-generation artificial grasses, this is almost completely eliminated by the use of polyethylene yarn.
- Artificial turf tends to be much hotter than natural grass when exposed to the sun.[13]
- Though insignificant, the production of the polymers used in artificial turf requires the use of fossil fuels or of crops from which polymers can be made, both of which are limited natural resources although natural grass fields require frequent cutting which use lawn movers that use fossil fuel, which is also insignificant.
See also
References
- ^ a b Lawton, Graham (2005). "Pitch battle over artificial grass". New Scientist (2502): p.35. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
{{cite journal}}:|pages=has extra text (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Salzburg turf approval at UEFA.com
- ^ Approval for artificial pitches at UEFA.com
- ^ "LigaTurf 250 ACS 75 / /RPU Data Sheet" (PDF). Polytan Sportstättenbau GmbH. 2006. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ "England to play on synthetic turf". BBC News. 2007-07-11. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ "Pitch 'No Excuse' For England". Sporting Life UK. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ Martyn Ziegler (2007-10-10). "England could slip up on plastic pitch, warns Ferguson". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news;_ylt=Ass8t0LC5NNiKhhap1WT9Gwmw7YF?slug=ap-us-bradley-turf&prov=ap&type=lgns
- ^ Monte Burke (2006-11-27). "Field of Screens". Forbes. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ New England Journal of Medicine article
- ^ David R. Brown, Sc.D. (2007). "Artificial Turf" (.PDF). Environment & Human Health, Inc. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ a b "New Penn State Study Debunks Staph Bacteria Scare In Synthetic Turf" (Press release). Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. 30 August 2006. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ C. Frank Williams, Gilbert E. Pulley (2002). "Synthetic Surface Heat Studies" (.PDF). Brigham Young University. Retrieved 2008-02-19.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help)
External links
- Turf toe, a general introduction
- Use of rubber and environmental considerations. This article discusses new technology which is planned to mitigate some of the problems of using recycled car tyres (tires). It also quantifies the amount of rubber on a typical pitch as 100 tons or 22,000 old car tyres.
- Rubber pollution in a domestic environment. This article looks at the impact of rubber crumb on a domestic environment.
- Artificial Turf for Football : a technical overview 2007[1]
- Artificial Turf for Football : Testing and Requirements FIFA-EN-DIN; an Overview 2007
- FIFA Football Turf
- English Football Association guidelines for choosing artificial grass pitches