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The last 20 years has witnessed an explosion of professional sporting and leisure activities, driven by consumers having more disposable income to spend, economic globalization, multi-channel 24 hour TV, the WWWeb and mobile telecommunications all hungry for content and information. It comes as no surprise then, that science and engineering have already embraced these opportunities with the advent of new disciplines like sports nutrition, sports psychology and the latest one onto the scene, sports engineering. This paper analyses some of the recent and likely future developments, and on this basis puts forward the view that sports engineering will be a transforming agent for the Sports & Leisure Industry well into the 21st Century. The yardstick for these developments will be considerations of sustainability, briefly introduced here in analytical categories, and their resulting innovation potentials.

Four problems has been solved: the design engineering of ski, finding several parameters in underdetermined problem of mechanics, optimal flight control of ski-jumper and making a strategic, plan for a factory of bicycles. All are solved in the frames of one approach called Pareto-optimisation. Pareto-optimisation is a relatively new method of multi-objective optimisation that makes the job of experts making final decision much more transparent than in other multi-objective approaches involving the dialogue with operator. The problems solved are typical problems when multi-objective optimisation arises in engineering. Method demonstrated in this paper gives a powerful tool of multi-objective optimisation and enables statement and successful solution of such problems in practice of sports engineering.

Soccer is arguably the biggest sport in the world, in terms of the impact on everyday lives, either through spectating or participation. Indeed, as the conference to which these proceedings are linked begins, we will all still be recovering from the excitement of the 2006 World Cup final that occurred in Berlin a few days previously. A sport that has so much impact, unsurprisingly also generates great research interest, reflected in the number of papers in the following section as well as in other sections of these proceedings. In sports engineering this research is fairly well distributed between four key components of the game: the ball, the pitch, the footwear used and the players themselves.

It is the common experience of many sports engineers that the culmination of their research often involves the building, testing and measuring of a final product. After theoretical calculations have been completed, simplified experiments undertaken, and new designs proposed, often the final, and some would say, most important part of a project involves a comparison of the theoretical predictions with what actually happens — the so-called “proof of the pudding”. To this end, the ability to measure changing parameters and to record data accurately and with absolute confidence is essential if any real assessment of a product in use is to be obtained. Modern developments in sports engineering require greater and greater precision in measuring techniques, plus the increasing requirement for new, or improved, methods using state of the art technologies. What wasn’t possible only a few years ago, is now often possible today; and what isn’t possible today may well be possible tomorrow. In terms of obtaining data, the technology of data acquisition and storage moves on at a pace that becomes bewildering to those attempting to keep up. The advances that are being made virtually everyday in terms of speed, accuracy and resolution are effectively taken for granted and go hand in hand with the development of cheap off-the-shelf components which, with a little ingenuity, can often be used by aspiring researchers to produce sophisticated and cost effective solutions to both acquire and output data within their own skill areas.

The importance of innovation and innovation-related research to my great pleasure has strongly increased in the sports engineering community during the last decade. Whereas just a couple of conferences ago I was feeling like a lone voice crying (the innovation doodle) in the wilderness, delightedly teaming up with those very few reporting on systematically designed pieces of sports equipment, by this year we had to split the topic area: You will not only find a number of contributions on various perspectives on innovation in the following, but also a good, share of innovative design oriented contributions summarized in another synopsis by Caine, and further trans-disciplinary papers opening up new perspectives on sports engineering in yet other topic areas.

In all forms of winter sports the equipment is of central importance. The equipment is needed to protect the athlete from adverse environmental conditions and to provide safety and comfort. Moreover, in a majority of winter sports the equipment facilitates a specific form of locomotion: gliding on the snow or ice. Gliding allows for much higher speeds than other, more typical forms of human locomotion, such as walking or running. It is thus the equipment that makes most forms of winter sport the highly dynamic sports that are so appealing to many of us. Much research has been and continues to be carried out in improving the safety and performance of winter sports athletes through better designed equipment. It is, therefore, perhaps not a surprise that our call for papers for a special issue on winter sports in the journal Sports Engineering resulted in an overwhelming response. Nineteen manuscripts were submitted of which 11 were found suitable for the journal. Eight of these could be included in this special edition, and others were distributed throughout volume 17. This editorial provides a brief overview of all accepted papers. Protection against injury has always been a primary field of interest for researchers and engineers working on winter sports. Two papers submitted for this special issue specifically address injury prevention. A white paper by Michel and colleagues presents current concepts for wrist protectors in snowboarding and discusses the need for an industry standard. This paper represents a position statement of the International Task Force on Wrist Protectors in Snowboarding of the International Society for Skiing Safety (ISSS). Another review paper by Senner et al. focuses on knee injuries in recreational alpine skiing and discusses what modifications of the ski-binding-boot system might offer an opportunity for reducing the risk of injury. The authors specifically consider the implications that the development of mechatronic bindings may have for injury prevention in skiing discussing three different types. Speed is an important determinant for athlete performance, which places a premium on optimising gliding friction and air drag. Several studies included in this special issue address friction phenomena. Puukilainen et al. used a variety of measurement devices that are currently used in the industry to characterise the surface properties of skis. They document changes in the topography, crystallinity and wettability of the skis’ running surface and in the skis’ sliding properties due to ski use, waxing and stone grinding. Bardal and Reid investigated how air drag depends on the permeability of alpine skiing apparel. Contrary to common belief, they found a weak dependence implying that increasing apparel permeability may have only a marginal effect on the speed of alpine skiers. Lozowski and colleagues investigated the friction between speed skate blades and ice by developing a sophisticated model that incorporates various interaction processes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first model for speed skate-ice interaction that considers inclined skate blades. The studies by Swaren et al. and Petrone et al. investigated the deformation properties of cross country ski poles and alpine ski boots, respectively. Both of these topics are important for the performance and the comfort of the athletes participating in these sports. P. Federolf (&) Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, P.O. Box 4014, Ulleval Stadion, 0806 Oslo, Norway e-mail: peter.federolf@nih.no

Cushioning in dairy cow synthetic bed materials is quantifiable in terms of compression force attenuation and stability, but animal observation trials aimed at finding the best materials are expensive and time–consuming. Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computational technique used for engineering stress and deformation analysis. Accelerometric testing is used in sports engineering to test the cushioning offered by athletics tracks and synthetic sports surfaces. In the current work, these two methods were used to study the cushioning performance of two of the most commonly used types of free–stall or cubicle synthetic bed, rubber–crumb mattresses and ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) mats, both of which are classified in engineering terms as hyperfoams. That is, materials that can undergo large deformations under load and yet return to their original shape on unloading. FEA was used, in conjunction with quasi–static compression force tests, to assess free–stall bed cushioning during the getting–up movement of a cow (a quasi–static “push”) and to predict, in a quick and cost–effective way, variation in performance in time or as a result of an altered bed specification. The force–deflection responses of the materials of the two bed types were closely matched in the ABAQUS FE code, giving confidence in the ability of the model to predict the effect of changes in, for example, bed thickness and density. Accelerometric testing was used for the assessment of two further performance criteria vital to a bed purchase decision: first, the impact absorption performance during the lying down movement of a cow (a dynamic “drop”), and second, variation in cushioning performance over time as a result of the bed being used by a herd for three years. The quasi–static testing and FEA showed that a new rubber–crumb bed was more compliant than a new EVA bed and would therefore be more likely to prevent knee pain during the getting–up movement. The peak acceleration results showed that the new–condition rubber–crumb bed cushioned a cow knee impact force from a lying down movement best. However, the test of the three–year–old rubber crumb bed showed it to be less compliant compared to the new condition (p < 0.001). The EVA bed peak acceleration results also showed cushioning performance to be poorer after three years of use (p = 0.007), although the data showed a less stark change compared to that for the rubber–crumb beds. The observed use–related reduction in cushioning performance of the rubber–crumb bed was simulated in ABAQUS by reducing the model thickness by 50% and looking at the force–deflection response.

Introducing new technology can shake up a sport, but over time there are diminishing returns. What will be the next big thing to improve performance?

How can we attract students to study engineering and then retain them in the engineering profession, ensuring completion of training and registration as chartered engineers? Teaching engineering ideas through sports, seems one way to satisfy the requirement for schools to foreground engineering in a way likely to appeal to their students. It is able to link 'hard science' with Design and Technology using material which students will find accessible. According to the international academic journal Sports Engineering the subject lies between classical engineering and sports science and is the application of engineering and science to sport. Recognising the attraction of sports to students Sports Engineering in Education (SEE) was set up in January 2001 with the support of the Science Enhancement Programme/ Gatsby Technical Education Project. The SEE project brief was to introduce and promote science, engineering, technology and sport to students in Key Stages 2-4 (with possible extension to other groups) using sports engineering. (8 pages)

This first issue of volume 11 of Sports Engineering represents a further development of the journal since its inception in 1998. During the last decade the journal, through the sterling efforts of its previous editors—Matt Carre, Steve Mather and, especially, Steve Haake—along with ISEA, particularly through Amanda Brothwell, has established itself as the recognised journal for scientific and applied research in sports engineering. Over the same period, sports engineering has emerged as a discipline in its own right increasing the number of practising sports engineers globally. This has also increased the depth and breadth of papers submitted to Sports Engineering, which helped prompt the decision to pass the publishing to Springer so that the sports engineering contacts within ISEA can be complemented by Springer’s expertise and experience as publishers of scientific journals and books. In line with the Olympic ideals this should lead to faster turnaround and reviewing of submitted papers along with initial on-line publication; higher quality in terms of papers published and impact factor; and longer issues representing the greater range noted above. The essence of the journal, however, will remain the same with the familiar green and yellow cover promising a varied mix of papers offering an interesting read to all involved in sports engineering.

Directional energy transfer quantifies the ratio of energy put into a system as a force acting in one direction to the energy returned as force acting in another direction. Directional energy transfer in sports shoes maximises conservative (recycled) energy and thus increases athletic performance in terms of running speed. The Adidas Bounce™ Concept uses tubes with a Θ -shaped cross section incorporated into the shoe sole. Directional energy transfer can be improved if the Bounce Tubes of Adidas shoes are rotated. The degree of rotation depends on the ratio of compressive to shear stiffness. The aim of this project was to analyse the structural properties (compressive and shear stiffness as a function of linear deflection) of Adidas Bounce Tubes and to optimise the degree of rotation. Maximal energy transfer from vertical to horizontal direction results from a Bounce Tube rotation of 18 degrees (counter clockwise, right view, running direction to the right) and with a tube length of 114 mm. The energy transfer with these conditions was 34%.

In this paper a method is presented that uses one sensor configuration for both static and dynamic loading conditions to capture plantar pressure distribution values. In the gait analysis, different phases are from interest. The phases produces highly different signals and with conventional sensors and static data acquisition systems it is often difficult to achieve high precision measure- ments. An advanced programmable amplifier can be used to adapt the full resolution of the measurement system dynamically to the needs of the gait analyses. With the proposed system, it is possible to precisely measure the gait phases without changing any hardware. While the system is performing it is energy efficient as it only consumes power if needed. Furthermore, it is highly integrated and space saving. Thus, ideally suited for mobile outdoor applications. The technology used in this example can be applied to many different general sensor measurement questions in sports engineering.

This paper presents some examples of teaching material used in Australia's first sports engineering degree programme. In an Australian context, the field of sports engineering education is very young. Despite the growth of sports engineering degree programmes, there is no clear description outlining sports engineering as a discipline. Although sports engineering programmes typically incorporate aspects of existing courses in the broad fields of mechanical and electronic engineering, there are other skills that are specifically required for sports engineers to possess. Over many years, traditional engineering fields have developed a plethora of quality teaching textbooks and course syllabi. Due to the recent growth of sports engineering as a field, there is a distinct lack of such material. One approach of dealing with this issue is to adopt the use of blended learning, merging suitable refereed scientific publications with traditional engineering theory, to problems applicable to sports. A number of international journal and conference series are dedicated to sports engineering, and these offer a wide breadth of up-to-date material; however, the suitability of this literature for educational purposes is not clear. In light of this gap, sports engineering in the Australian education system requires a clearer definition, and also some examples of suitable teaching material. These issues will be explored in this paper, and some solutions will be addressed. Although the paper is focussed on the Australian system, the broad findings are applicable world-wide.

Individual suspension of different segments of the heel sole is imperative for optimal 3D cushioning and rear foot control. A test rig was developed which measures the overall structural properties of the heel sole as well as the properties of the medial, lateral, and posterior segments. The structural properties measured are the stiffness as a function of deflection and the influence of viscosity from compression tests of the segments and whole heel. Based on the properties a critique was made of the shoes’ supinating effect. This effect is required to counterbalance overpronation in shod running. The level of energy absorption was also assessed. The test method developed does not rely on test persons and is thus more objective than other tests for determining the supinating effect of the shoes.

A golf swing-robot is generally used for the evaluation of the performance of a golf club and a ball. A conventional golf swing-robot has two or three joints, and the motions of these joints are completely interrelated. Therefore, the user of this robot can specify only the initial posture and swing velocity. Thus this type of robot can not adjust the swing motion subtly to the characteristics of golf clubs. Consequently the golf swing-robot differs from a professional golfer and it causes serious problems for the evaluation of the performance of golf clubs. In this paper, we investigate analytically the golf swing-robot which can adjust it's motion to the specified value of the swing velocity and the characteristics of golf clubs such as the moment of inertia around the grip and the flexural rigidity of the shaft.

Dance training on floors that are not ‘sprung’ are assumed to have direct implications for injury. Standards for dance floor manufacture in Europe and North America quantify floor force reduction by measuring the impact forces of drop masses. In ad dition, many studies of human mechanical adaptations to varied surfaces, have quantified test surfaces using measures of static stiffness. It is unclear whether these methods for the measurement of floor mechanical properties actually reflect dancer requirements or floor behaviour under dancer loading. The aim of this study was to compare the force reduction, static stiffness and dynamic stiffness of a range of dance floors. Dynamic stiffness was measured during dancers performing drop landings. Force reduction highly correlated (p= 0.086) with floors of moderate dynamic stiffness, but was less accurate for high and low s tiffness floors. Static stiffness underestimated the dynamic stiffness of the floors. Measurement of floor force reduction using European sports surface standards may provide an accurate representation of dynamic floor stiffness when unde r load from dancers performing drop landings. The discrepancy between static and dynamic stiffness may be explained by the inertial characteristics of the floor and the rapid loading of the floors during dancer landings. The development of portable systems for measuring floor behaviour under human loads using modern motion capture technologies may be beneficial for improving the qua ntification of dance floor mechanical properties. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University.

The accurate estimation of activation forces remains a significant challenge in the field of injury prediction and simulation in sports. Precision in the field of biomechanical simulation has been improved through the use of medical data such as Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). These have the added benefit of providing simulation that is patient-specific. As a developing research technique, the absolute accuracy of biomechanical simulation has been improved in line with the development of both imaging and simulation technology. Cutting-edge simulation methods are now able to describe the minutiae of biomechanical systems with ever-increasing complexity. As the complexity of progressive biomechanical simulation increases, research is being undertaken to determine if more simplistic methods may now be considered for the robust and accurate portrayal of general bone behaviour and fracture prediction. In this paper, the Computed Tomography based Finite Element (CT- FE) simulation process is examined and its application with regards to Sports Engineering is discussed. It is proposed that this method of patient-specific and geometrically-accurate simulation would provide an excellent tool for the investigation of injury mechanisms and equipment design, allowing a wide array of operating conditions to be simulated without the need for physical testing, which can be complex to the extent of unfeasible.

The University of Colorado Denver (UCD) has taken the leadership role with the first Sports Engineering Program in the United States. Sports Engineering is an exciting new area of emphasis for graduate degrees in engineering. This educational program is offered through cooperation between the downtown Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science and the Anschutz Medical Campus, both part of the University of Colorado Denver. This program is showing great promise for high enrollments and exciting research opportunities working with the sports equipment manufacturers, the athletes, and the sports medicine community.

Conventional golf swing-robots are generally used to evaluate the performance of golf clubs and balls. Most of the robots have two or three joints with completely interrelated motion. Therefore, subtle adjustments in swing motion that advanced golfers make according to the characteristics of individual golf clubs are not possible. Consequently, golf swing-robots can not accurately emulate the performance of advanced golfers, which is a problem for evaluation of golf club performance. In this study, a new golf swing-robot that can adjust its motion to both a specified value of swing velocity and the specific characteristics of individual golf clubs was experimentally investigated. This robot utilizes the dynamic interference force produced by swing motion and shaft vibration like advanced golfers. Thus, this new robot can emulate the performance of advanced golfers and can therefore be used for accurate evaluation of golf clubs.

Since commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, was first used in anger within sport in the early 1990s it has now evolved to become a dominant, if not indispensible, sports equipment design technology that can produce legal competitive advantage improvements and performance enhancement in elite sport – in effect it can be a killer engineering “app” in sport. This paper will trace the origins of CFD in Motor Sport, Americas Cup Yachting and various Olympic Sports up to its ubiquitous utilization today where it can yield near real-time fluid flow simulation predictions and virtual product development. Indeed, CFD has had a significant impact in the last 20 years on the design of sports stadia, various winter & summer sports equipment design, understanding of ball sports, all motor sport categories, world speed record attempts, numerous water sport equipment designs and various flying related sports activities. A comparison of CFD in sport capabilities between 1992 and 2012 will be offered in this paper and the underlying enabling technology trends described that have helped to make this transformation possible. Finally, the author offers future trend predictions for CFD (and associated multiphysics) technologies in sport for the next 20 years; such as virtual athletes, biomedical applications, enhanced training scenarios, on-the-day-of-the-race climate and landscape modeling, new materials and their fluid-structure effects, video & web based CFD solutions, and the increasing overlap of electronics and mechanics in sports engineering. Indeed, the cross fertilization of technologies from Hollywood movies, mobile phones, the internet and video games to CFD in sports engineering remains to be fully exploited.

The world has witnessed in the recent years a major development in the sector of sports engineering to serve the individual sports, also the importance of mental training has been confirmed by many researcher over the past years. The author recognized that the effect of the nature and components of mattresses on mental training has not yet been studied. So he aimed to identify this effect on the level of mental toughness and tactics for junior fencers.The researcher used the experimental method using pre and post measurements for three variables muscle tension, mental skills and tactical performance. This research was conducted on an intentional sample of junior fencers (n=12) for foil, saber and epee types. After applying the statistical processing on the experiment results, the researcher concluded that using air mattresses during mental training had an impact on the development of mental training skills as well as improving the tactical performance of junior fencers. And using water mattresses during mental training has an impact on improving the tactics for junior fencers. Also using the cotton mattresses had no impact on developing any of the research variables.

Individual athletes, coaches and sports teams seek continuously for ways to improve performance and accomplishment in elite competition. New techniques of performance analysis are a crucial part of the drive for athletic perfection. This paper discusses the ethical importance of one aspect of the future potential of performance analysis in sport, combining the field of biomedicine, sports engineering and nanotechnology in the form of 'Nanobiosensors'. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionise sport, enabling real time biological data to be collected from athletes that can be electronically distributed. Enabling precise real time performance analysis is not without ethical problems. Arguments concerning (1) data ownership and privacy; (2) data confidentiality; and (3) athlete welfare are presented alongside a discussion of the use of the Precautionary Principle in making ethical evaluations. We conclude, that although the future potential use of Nanobiosensors in sports analysis offers many potential benefits, there is also a fear that it could be abused at a sporting system level. Hence, it is essential for sporting bodies to consider the development of a robust ethically informed governance framework in advance of their proliferated use. ispartof: SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ETHICS vol:23 issue:6 pages:1487-1505 ispartof: location:England status: published

Although robot-assisted training is present in various fields such as sports engineering and rehabilitation, provision of training strategies that optimally support individual motor learning remains as a challenge. Literature has shown that guidance strategies are useful for beginners, while skilled trainees should benefit from challenging conditions. The Challenge Point Theory also supports this in a way that learning is dependent on the available information, which serves as a challenge to the learner. So, learning can be fostered when the optimal amount of information is given according to the trainee’s skill. Even though the framework explains the importance of difficulty modulation, there are no practical guidelines for complex dynamic tasks on how to match the difficulty to the trainee’s skill progress. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the impact on learning of a complex motor task by a modulated task difficulty scheme during the training sessions, without distorting the nature of task. In this 3-day protocol study, we compared two groups of naive participants for learning a sweep rowing task in a highly sophisticated rowing simulator. During trainings, groups received concurrent visual feedback displaying the requested oar movement. Control group performed the task under constant difficulty in the training sessions. Experimental group’s task difficulty was modulated by changing the virtual water density that generated different heaviness of the simulated water-oar interaction, which yielded practice variability. Learning was assessed in terms of spatial and velocity magnitude errors and the variability for these metrics. Results of final day tests revealed that both groups reduced their error and variability for the chosen metrics. Notably, in addition to the provision of a very well established visual feedback and knowledge of results, experimental group’s variable training protocol with modulated difficulty showed a potential to be advantageous for the spatial consistency and velocity accuracy. The outcomes of training and test runs indicate that we could successfully alter the performance of the trainees by changing the density value of the virtual water. Therefore, a follow-up study is necessary to investigate how to match different density values to the skill and performance improvement of the participants.