The Sport Surfaces Research Group at Loughborough University sits within the Sports Technology Institute, set up in 2002. In addition, we established the ‘Sportsurf’ network to raise awareness and collaboration between industry and academia.
The research group’s research portfolio is broad across 4 key themes: User Safety; Play Performance; Pitch Infrastructure, and Maintenance. We aim to enhance and unify research across the sector. Our work has primarily been in artificial turf surfaces, but more recently includes natural and hybrid turf systems. In our approach we consider the interface between the surface behaviour and the athlete interaction is crucial and complex, in particular for performance and injury risk. We are constantly working towards developing and deepening our knowledge for describing and relating the components of sport surfaces to the many influencing factors in response to player (and mechanical test) loading – throughout their service life.