Excellence, Environment, and Equity
Research at CTI is guided by three principles. Together, they broaden the questions asked during development, from how a surface performs to how it is used and how it is designed.
Center for Turf Innovation
Understanding the athlete. Improving the surface.
The Center for Turf Innovation brings sports science, engineering, material knowledge and real world testing together to better understand how surfaces behave and how athletes interact with them. Research starts with questions that conventional surface testing cannot always answer. What happens when a player accelerates, brakes or changes direction? How does a surface respond to repeated load? What changes over years of use? And how do climate, maintenance and different sports influence performance? Understanding those interactions provides the foundation for better surface design.
Research built around real movement
Athletes do not move like test equipment. They accelerate, brake, rotate, jump and change direction, often within fractions of a second. Understanding these movements requires more than measuring whether a surface meets a technical standard. At CTI, biomechanical analysis is combined with player testing and feedback to study the interaction between athlete and surface during real movement. This includes grip and release, impact attenuation, stability, loading and how players perceive the surface beneath them.
Different questions require different ways of measuring. CTI combines multiple technologies to build a detailed picture of athlete and surface interaction.
- High speed video captures movement in detail
- 3D motion capture tracks player movement
- Inertial Measurement Units collect movement data during real play
- Force plates measure ground reaction forces and impact loading
- Pressure mapping shows how feet and studs interact with the surface during acceleration, turning and braking
Together, these measurements help researchers understand not only what happens during movement, but why.
Physical measurements can be combined with computational models to study forces that cannot always be observed directly. Finite Element Analysis helps model athlete and surface interaction, while musculoskeletal modelling provides insight into joint behaviour and muscular loading during movement. These methods add another layer to the understanding of how changes in surface design can influence athlete interaction.
Data alone does not tell the complete story. Player feedback is collected alongside physical measurements through structured interviews, surveys, perception studies and longer term evaluation. Combining what athletes experience with what measurement systems record can reveal patterns that either method alone may miss.
Research becomes useful when it changes design. CTI combines research and testing with in house manufacturing capabilities, allowing new yarns, materials and surface constructions to be prototyped and evaluated.
Findings can lead to another design, another prototype and another round of testing. Pure PT™, for example, went through more than fifty design iterations and four years of development, informed by player feedback, biomechanical measurements and extensive testing. The process is deliberately iterative: measure, learn, adjust and test again.
Validation takes CTI beyond the laboratory. At the TenCate FieldLab at PSV Academy, surfaces can be evaluated during real training. Players, coaches and specialists provide feedback while researchers measure how surfaces behave under realistic sporting loads. Research also travels to the field.
Through the mobile CTI, measurements can be carried out on surfaces across Europe and other parts of the world. This allows researchers to study fields under different climates, sports, levels of use, maintenance regimes and stages of their functional life. A heavily used community pitch in Northern Europe presents different questions from a professional training surface in Southern Europe. Understanding those differences matters. The field becomes part of the laboratory.
Lab data informs field testing. Player experience challenges assumptions. Measurements from fields around the world provide real world context. Those findings return to the development process. Materials can be reconsidered. Fibre structures can be adjusted. System constructions can be refined. New prototypes can then return to the lab and ultimately to the field. Research therefore does not stop when a product is introduced. Learning continues as surfaces are used.
TenCate FieldLab at PSV Academy
Keep testing. Keep learning.
A surface changes throughout its functional life. Athletes use it differently. Weather changes. Maintenance varies. Materials respond to repeated load.
Understanding those changes requires research that continues beyond the laboratory and beyond product introduction.
That is the role of the Center for Turf Innovation: measure, test, validate, learn and use that knowledge to improve the next surface.