Landing impact analysis of sport surfaces using three-dimensional finite element model

Abstract

Shock absorbance, or force reduction, is the most significant parameter in sport surfaces which has been used as an injury prevention criterion. Many sport federations like the International Association of Athletics Federations, the International Federation of Association Football and the International Hockey Federation have arranged force reduction tests for sport surfaces which are performed by an apparatus called the Artificial Athlete Berlin. As this apparatus has been designed for simulating a normal subject at usual conditions, some major details are neglected. In this article, a finite element model, which included the human lower limb and a standard sport surface, was developed and is capable of extracting force reduction parameters in various sport conditions. The viscoelastic behavior of the sport surface was extracted by compression stress-relaxation tests with various strain rates to import into the finite element model. To calculate the shock absorbance of the sport surface, the contact pressure versus time curves were plotted for the top and bottom layers of the sport surface. The difference between peak values of curves was extracted as the sport surface shock absorbance ability. To validate the proposed model, a finite element model which included the Artificial Athlete Berlin apparatus was simulated. The results present an excellent correlation between the proposed and the Artificial Athlete Berlin apparatus models. Also, the shock absorption value obtained by the proposed model was close to the average value reported by the ASTM F2772 standard which the sport surface meets.