Landwards 2010 Conference
Landwards 2010 Conference
The construction and maintenance of safe and sustainable sports surfaces is a fundamental prerequisite for the safety and enjoyment of participants in sport from the grassroots level through to the professional game. In recent years, much progress has been made in the development of artificial turf surfaces however natural turf still remains the yard-stick by which the performance of synthetic alternatives is measured.
The performance of a natural turf surface is governed by the complex interaction of many variables e.g. soil type, water content, soil density, grass species, soil nutrition and pH. There is, therefore, an excellent opportunity to see how engineering disciplines such as drainage, irrigation, soil mechanics, soil physics, agronomy and mechanisation underpin the construction and maintenance of natural turf sports surfaces.
The conference will place particular emphasis on the interaction between participants of sport (both human and equine) and sports surfaces.
Roger Lane-Nott (Chief Executive of the AEA) will chair the conference.
The morning session will commence with a paper delivered by Mr James Calder – Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. He will talk on the effects of sports surfaces on the human foot and ankle.
Dr Iain James (Cranfield University) will examine ‘How sports surfaces work: A mechanical exploration’. He will look at the mechanical behaviour of sports surfaces using various studies from the field and labs including both human sports performance and machinery-surface interactions.
Dr Richard Earl (TGMS Ltd) will complete the morning session with a paper on pitch design and construction.
Dr Sian Lawson (William Leech Senior Lecturer in Bio-Medical Engineering at Newcastle University) a Prinicipal Investigator in musculo-skeletal bio-mechanics will start the afternoon session with a presentation on equine gait analysis in the context of sports turf.
Mike Maher (TurfTrax Course Services Ltd) will talk about the development of the “going stick” for the monitoring of sports surfaces.
David Shelton (Shelton Sportsturf Drainage Solutions LLP) will talk about developments in machinery for sports surface drainage.
Roger Davey (Irritech) will explain some of the criteria used when designing irrigation systems for sports surfaces.
Landwards 2010 is convened by the IAgrE in association with The Institute of Groundsmanship, Cranfield University and Turf Professional and sponsored by Ransomes Jacobsen and Autoguide Equipment