Synthetic grass is a synthetic fiber surface that is made to look like a natural grass. It is most commonly used in the arena for sport that was originally or usually played on the grass. However, it is now used in residential grass lawns and commercial applications as well. The main reason is maintenance - synthetic grass for heavy use, as in sports, and does not require irrigation or trimming. Dome, closed, and partially enclosed stadiums may require synthetic grass because of the difficulty of getting enough grass sunshine to stay healthy. Synthetic grass does have its downside, however: a limited life, regular cleaning requirements, use of petroleum, toxic chemicals from the content, and an increase in health and safety issues.
Synthetic grass was first gained great attention in the 1960s, when it was used in the newly built Astrodome. The specific product used is developed by Monsanto and is called AstroTurf ; this term has since become a generic trademark for synthetic turf throughout the late 20th century. AstroTurf remains a registered trademark but no longer owned by Monsanto. The first generation grass systems (ie, short fibers without infill) of the 1960s have been largely replaced by second generation and third generation grass systems. The second generation synthetic turf system has longer fibers and sand, and the third generation system, the most widely used today, offers a recharging that is a mixture of recycled sand and rubber granules.
Video Artificial turf
History
David Chany - who moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1960 and later served as Dean of the University of North Carolina College of Textiles - led the Research Triangle Triangle research team that created the first famous artificial turf. The achievement leads Sports Illustrated to declare Chaney the man "responsible for premier league baseball indoors and millions of welcome mats."
Synthetic grass was first installed in 1964 in the recreational school area of ​​preparation in Rhode Island. The material became popular in public in 1966, when AstroTurf was installed at Astrodome in Houston, Texas. The sophisticated indoor stadium had tried to use the natural grass during its first season in 1965, but this failed miserably and the field conditions were very inadequate during the second half of the season, with dead grass painted green. Due to the limited supply of new artificial grasses, only infields were installed before Houston Astros' opening house in April 1966; The outfield was installed in early summer during Astros's extended trip and first used after the All-Star Break in July.
The use of AstroTurf and similar surfaces became widespread in the US and Canada in the early 1970s, installed in indoor and outdoor stadiums used for baseball and football. More than 11,000 artificial turf fields have been installed nationwide. More than 1,200 are installed in the US in 2013 alone, according to industry group Synthetic Turf Council.
Maintaining grass playing indoors on the surface, while technically possible, is very expensive. Teams that choose to play on artificial surfaces outdoors do so because of reduced maintenance costs, especially in cold climates with urban "cookie-cutter" multi-purpose stadiums like the Riverfront Stadium of Cincinnati, the Three Rivers Pittsburgh Stadium and the Philadelphia Veterans Stadium.
Maps Artificial turf
The sports app
Baseball
Synthetic grass was first used in Major League Baseball at the Houston Astrodome in 1966, replacing the grass field used when the stadium opened a year earlier. Although the grass was specifically cultivated for indoor use, the ceiling panels of the semi-transparent Lucite dome, which were painted white to reduce the glare that disturbed the performers, did not miss enough sunlight to support the grass. For much of the 1965 season, Astros played on green-painted ground and dead grass.
The solution was to install a new kind of artificial turf on the field, ChemGrass, which came to be known as AstroTurf. Since AstroTurf's supply is still low, only a limited amount is available for the first home game. There is not enough for the whole field, but there is enough to cover the traditional grass part of the infield. Outfield keeps painted dirt until after All-Star Break. The team was sent for a long journey before the break, and on July 19, 1966, the AstroTurf exterior installation was completed, thus making the entire field covered with AstroTurf.
The Chicago White Sox became the first team to install artificial grass in an outdoor stadium, as they used it in infields and adjacent dirty areas at Comiskey Park from 1969 to 1975. Artificial grass was then installed in other new multi-purpose stadiums such as the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Stadium , Philadelphia Veterans Stadium, and Riverfront Cincinnati Stadium. The original AstroTurf baseball field used a traditional all-terrain track, but in the early 1970s, the team began using the "basic pieces" layout of diamonds, with the only dirt on the pitcher, the dough circle, and in the "sliding box "around each base. With this layout, a painted bow will show where the edge of the field grass is usually, to help the golfer in positioning himself properly. The last stadium in MLB to use this configuration was the Rogers Center in Toronto, when they switched to very dirty soil (but retained artificial grass) after the 2015 season.
The biggest difference in playing on synthetic turf is that the ball bounces higher than the real grass and also travels faster, causing the infuser to play farther back than usual so they will have enough time to react. The ball also has a bounce that is more true than in the grass so that on long throws can accidentally reflect the ball in front of the players they throw, with the certainty that the ball will run in a straight line and not deflected to the right or to the right. left. However, the biggest impact on the game "grass", as it is called, is in the bodies of the players. Artificial surfaces, which are generally placed on a concrete base, have less to give to it than traditional dirt and grass, which causes more wear on the knees, ankles, feet, and lower back, possibly even shortening the careers of players who play a part big game on artificial surfaces. Players also complain that the grass is much hotter than the grass, sometimes causing metal spikes to burn their feet or plastic ones to melt. These factors eventually provoke a number of stadiums, such as Kansas City Royals'Kauffman Stadium, to switch from synthetic turf back to natural grass.
In 2000, Tropicana Field became the first MLB field to use a third generation artificial surface, FieldTurf. All other artificial grass stadiums are either converted to third generation surfaces or replaced entirely by new natural grass stadiums. In just 13 years, between 1992 and 2005, the National League changed from having half of his team using synthetic grass for all of them to play on the natural grass. With the replacement of Minneapolis Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome by Target Field in 2010, only two MLB stadiums still use synthetic grass: Tropicana Field and Toronto's Rogers Center.
American/Canadian football
The first professional American soccer team to play on synthetic turf was the Houston Oilers at the time part of the American Football League, which moved to Astrodome in 1968, which had installed AstroTurf two years earlier. In 1969, Franklin Field at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, at that time also the Philadelphia Eagles home field, switched from grass to AstroTurf, making it the first National Football League stadium to use synthetic grass.
In 2002, CenturyLink Field, originally planned to have a natural grass field, instead appeared with FieldTurf for the positive reaction of Seattle Seahawks when they played on the surface at their temporary home at the Husky Stadium during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. This will be the first of the trends leaguewide that will not only produce teams that are already using artificial surfaces for their fields to switch to new FieldTurf or other similar surfaces but will also see some teams playing on grass adopting new surfaces. (Indianapolis Colts 'RCA Dome and St. Louis Rams' Edward Jones Dome are the last two stadiums in the NFL to replace their first-generation AstroTurf surfaces for the next generation after the 2004 season). For example, after a three-year experiment with the natural surface of Giants Stadium went to FieldTurf for 2003, while M & T Bank Stadium added its own homemade surface in the same year (since it was removed and replaced with a natural surface, which was stadium before grass). Recent examples include the Paul Brown Stadium, which moved from lawn to grass in 2004; Gillette Stadium, which switched in 2006; and NRG Stadium, which did so in 2015. Today, 12 NFL fields of 31 are made.
Eight of the nine stadiums in the Canadian Football League currently use artificial grass. The only thing missing is BMO Field in Toronto, which originally had an artificial pitch and has been shared by the Toronto Argonauts CFL since 2016 (however, part of the endzones in the stadium were covered with artificial turf). The first stadium to use the next generation surface is Ottawa's Frank Clair Stadium (now TD Place Stadium), which Ottawa Resegades used when they started playing in 2002. The last stadium to replace their first generation artificial surfaces for the new is Taylor Field from Saskatchewan Roughriders, who replaced it in 2007.
NFL players love natural grass on synthetic surfaces, according to a league survey conducted in 2010. When asked, "Which surface do you think is more likely to shorten your career?", 90% answered the synthetic grass.
Field hock
The introduction of synthetic surfaces has significantly changed the sport of field hockey. Since its introduction in the 1970s, competition in western countries is now mostly played on artificial surfaces. It has increased game speed significantly and changed the shape of hockey sticks to allow different techniques, such as a reverse stick trap and hit.
The field of synthetic hockey grass is different from synthetic grass for other sports, therefore it does not try to reproduce the "feel" grass, which is made of shorter fibers. This shorter fiber structure allows the increased speed brought by the previous artificial grass to be maintained. Developments in this game, however, are a problem for many local communities who are often unable to build two artificial areas: one for field hockey and one for other sports. The International Hockey Federation and manufacturers encourage research to produce new fields that will be suitable for a variety of sports.
The use of artificial turf in conjunction with changes in the rules of the game (eg, offside removal, the introduction of a rolling and self-pass replacement, and the interpretation of obstruction) has contributed significantly to changing the nature of the game, greatly improving the speed and intensity of play as well as placing far greater demands on player conditioning.
Associate Football
Several association football clubs in Europe installed synthetic surfaces in the 1980s, called "plastic pitches" (often mocked) in countries like England. There, some professional club spots have adopted them; QPR's Loftus Road, Luton Town's Kenilworth Road, Oldham Athletic's Boundary Park and Preston's Deepdale. QPR was the first team to install an artificial pitch in their stadium in 1981, but the first one erased it when they did it in 1988. The last Football League team that had an artificial pitch in England was Preston North End, who erased their pitch in 1994 after eight years used.
Turf gained a bad reputation on both sides of the Atlantic with fans and especially with players. The first AstroTurf is a much harder surface than the grass and is immediately known as an unforgiving playground that tends to cause more injuries, and in particular, more serious joint injuries, than it will comparatively suffer on the surface of the grass. This region is also considered unattractive to many fans.
In 1981, London football club Queens Park Rangers dug up his grass field and installed a clone. Others followed, and by the mid-1980s there were four artificial surfaces operating in the English league. They soon became a national joke: the round spinning ball like that was made of rubber, the players kept losing their footing, and anyone who fell on carpet burns were at risk. Not surprisingly, fans complain that football is so bad to watch and, one by one, the club goes back to the natural grass.
In the 1990s, many North American football clubs also wiped out their artificial surfaces and reassembled the grass, while others moved into a new stadium with sophisticated grass surfaces designed to withstand the cold temperatures in which the climate demanded it. The use of artificial grass was then banned by FIFA, UEFA and by many domestic football associations, although, in recent years, both government agencies have expressed interest raised in the use of artificial surfaces in competition, provided they are recommended FIFA. UEFA has now been heavily involved in the program to test the synthetic turf, with tests made at several meetings with FIFA approval. A UEFA team, FIFA and German company Polytan conducted a test at the Salzburg Wals-Siezenheim Stadium in Salzburg, Austria which has played matches at UEFA Euro 2008. It is an approved FIFA 2 Star artificial turf on European domestic flights. , after Dutch club Heracles Almelo received a FIFA certificate in August 2005. The test was approved.
FIFA originally launched the FIFA Quality Concept in February 2001. UEFA announced that starting from the 2005-06 season, approved artificial surfaces were allowed in their competition.
A complete international fixture for the 2008 European Championships was played on October 17, 2007 between Britain and Russia on an artificial surface, mounted to counter bad weather conditions, at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. It is one of the first full international games to be played on the surface as approved by FIFA and UEFA. However, UEFA ordered that the 2008 European Champions League final held in the same stadium in May 2008 should be done on grass, so a natural grass pitch is temporarily installed only for the final.
UEFA stressed that synthetic turf should only be considered an option where climatic conditions necessitate. One of Desso's "hybrid grass" products combines both natural grass and artificial elements.
In June 2009, after a match played at Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in Costa Rica, American national team manager Bob Bradley asked FIFA to "have courage" and ban artificial surfaces.
FIFA established a star system for synthetic turf land that has undergone a series of tests that check the quality and performance based on a two star system. The recommended two star field can be used for the FIFA Final Round Competition as well as for UEFA Europa League and Champions League matches. There are currently 130 FIFA 2-Star installations in the world.
In 2009, FIFA launched the Selective Producers Initiative to improve the quality of artificial football grass at every stage of the life cycle (manufacturing, installation and maintenance). Currently, there are five manufacturers selected by FIFA: Act Global, Limonta, Desso, GreenFields, and Edel Grass. These companies have made direct quality assurance to FIFA and have approved increased research and development.
In 2010, Estadio Omnilife with artificial turf opened in Guadalajara to become Chivas's new home, one of the most popular teams in Mexico. The owner of Chivas, Jorge Vergara, defended the rationale behind the use of artificial grass because the stadium was designed to be "environmentally friendly and thus, the grass will produce too much water." However, the player blasted hard on the pitch, saying it caused a lot of injuries as a result of a harder surface. When Johan Cruyff became team advisor, he recommended a switch to the natural grass, which the team performed in 2012.
In November 2011, it was reported that a number of English football clubs were interested in using artificial pitches again for economic reasons. As of October 2016, artificial pitches are not allowed in the Premier League or the Football League but are allowed in the National League and the bottom division. The two most prominent British football clubs to date using third-generation artificial pitches are Sutton United, which has a 2-Star FIFA pitch quality at Gander Green Lane in August 2015, and Maidstone United, which has a 2-Star pitch along with Stadium The new Gallagher in July 2012. The match between the two clubs has been named by El Plastico fans (reference to El ClÃÆ'¡sico). Artificial grounds are also allowed in all rounds of the FA Cup competition.
In February 2015, Arsenal F.C. ordered 1,400m2 of artificial turf from a Swiss company called Tisca Tiara for their training at the Arsenal Training Center.
2015 Women's World Cup
Women's World Cup takes place completely on artificial surfaces, as the show is played in Canada, where almost all stadiums in the country use artificial grass due to climate problems. The plan garnered criticism from players and fans, some believe the artificial surface makes players more vulnerable to injury. More than fifty female athletes protest the use of artificial grass on the basis of gender discrimination.
But Australian winger Caitlin Foord said after 90 minutes of play there was no difference to post-match recovery - a view shared by the rest of the squad. The squad spent a lot of time preparing for the surface and had no problems with its use in Winnipeg.
"We've been practicing on artificial pitches for most of the year so I think we're a bit used to that... I think your grass or grass can still draw pain after the game so it's definitely about getting a recovery and getting it right," Foord said.
The 2012 Women's World Player of the Year, Abby Wambach, noted "The players will attack, play on the synthetic turf."
The controversial issue of gender equality and the equal playing field for all has sparked debate in many countries around the world. The lawsuit was filed on October 1, 2014 in an Ontario court court by a group of women's international footballers against FIFA and the Canadian Football Association and specifically pointed out that in 1994 FIFA spent $ 2 million to plant natural grass on artificial grass in New Jersey and Detroit.
Celebrities are showing their support for female football players in defending their lawsuits, including actor Tom Hanks, NBA player Kobe Bryant and US men's team goalkeeper Tim Howard. Even with the possibility of a boycott, the head of the FIFA women's competition, Tatjana Haenni, explained that "we play on synthetic grass and there is no Plan B."
Rugby
Rugby also uses artificial surfaces at a professional level. Field fillers are used by the British Aviva Premiership team of Saracens F.C., Newcastle Falcons and Worcester Warriors, as well as the Cardiff Blues and Cardiff Warriors Pro14 team. Several fields, including Twickenham Stadium, have combined hybrid fields, with grass and synthetic fibers being used on the surface. This allows the terrain to be much louder, making it less susceptible to weather conditions and frequently used.
Tennis
Carpets have been used as surfaces for indoor tennis courts for decades, although the first rugs used are more similar to home rugs than synthetic grasses. After the introduction of artificial grass, it is used for tennis courts, both indoors and outdoors, although only a small part of the court uses the surface. Both infill and non-infill versions are used, and are usually considered moderate for fast surfaces under the International Tennis Federation classification scheme. The distinct form found in tennis is the surface of "artificial clay", which attempts to simulate clay by using a very short stack carpet with the same loose aggregate content used for clay that rises above the carpet fiber.
Golf
Synthetic grass can also be used in the golf industry, such as in golf range, putting green and even under certain conditions of tee box. Due to the vast area of ​​the golf course and the damage from the club during the shoot, it is not feasible to bring up fairways with artificial turf.
Other apps
Landscaping
Since the early 1990s, the use of synthetic grass in the drier western states of the United States has moved beyond the athletic field into the residential and commercial landscape.
Airport
Synthetic grass has been used at the airport. Some synthetic turf systems allow the integration of fiber-optic fibers into the grass. This will allow runway lighting to be implanted on an artificial landing surface for aircraft (or lighting or advertising to be directly embedded in the play surface).
Environmental issues
Both rubber granules (often made from recycled waste tires) and synthetic grass synthetic fibers are worn and can be washed into the environment. Second only to tire and road wear particles (TRWP) which is a large part of fine road debris, rubber granules from infiltration of artificial turf are a significant source of rubber pollution. Fragments of artificial reeds make their way into the environment as microplastic contamination in the ocean and soil environment.
Health and safety
Injuries
A number of health and safety issues have been raised about synthetic turf. The friction between the skin and the generation of older synthetic turf can cause blisters and/or burns that are much larger than natural grasses. Synthetic grass tends to retain heat from the sun and can be much hotter than natural grass with prolonged exposure to sunlight. There is some evidence that synthetic turf disinfection is periodically necessary because pathogens do not decompose by natural processes in the same way as natural grasses. Nevertheless, a 2006 study showed that certain microbial life was less active in synthetic grass.
There is evidence to suggest higher levels of player injury in synthetic turf. In a study conducted by the National Football League Injury and Safety Panel, published in the October issue of American Journal of Sports Medicine, Elliott B. Hershman et al. reviewing injury data from NFL games played between 2000 and 2009. "... the overall knee injury rate was 22% higher in FieldTurf than in natural grasses, whereas MCL sprains did not occur at levels significantly higher than in grass , the ACL sprain rate is 67% higher in FieldTurf. "Metatarsophalangeal sprain joints, known as" turf toe "when the big toe is involved, are named after injuries attributed to playing sports on rigid surfaces such as synthetic grass and are fairly common injuries among American professional football players. Synthetic grass is a harder surface than grass and does not have much "give" when troops are placed on it.
Materials used
Some artificial grass uses infill like silicone sand and/or granulated rubber, which is referred to as "crumb rubber". Some granular rubbers are made from recycled car tires and can carry heavy metals that can seep into the water surface. In early 2007, a moratorium on the use of ground rubber tires in the field and playground was recommended based on health problems. In 2013, the EPA is calling for further studies to monitor the impact of particulate matter from fields and playgrounds using synthetic grass.
See also
- Poly-Turf
- List of college football stadiums with non-traditional field colors
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments