Sport floors
Impact Behavior and Viscoelastic Performance Evaluation
The mechanical response of sports floors defines how the surface reacts to impact and is directly connected to athlete performance and safety.
During the design and testing phases, surface behavior is typically evaluated by measuring energy absorption and restitution through controlled impact procedures. However, standard methods are confined to laboratory conditions and cannot be applied once the surface has been installed. To overcome this limitation, VESevo technology enables non-destructive testing of sports floors both in laboratory settings and directly on-site. Measurements are based on the Coefficient of Restitution (COR), extracted from bounce curves acquired with the device and used as a reference parameter to evaluate energy restitution and detect local variations in surface behavior.
Tests on different floor types support design validation, installation quality checks and wear monitoring.
All floors have been tested in a thermal range -10°C/55°C. The resulting curves are shifted to a reference frequency of 1Hz.
The figures above highlight that Sport Floor 2 and Sport Floor 4 floors have the same viscoelastic response, both in terms of Storage Modulus and Loss Factor.
On the other hand, Sport Floor 3 floor shows the highest values of Loss Factor exhibiting a greater dissipative behaviour compared to the other floors.
Moreover, it can be observed that Sport Floor 2 and Sport Floor 4 do not have a strong dependence on temperature compared to Sport Floor 1 and Sport Floor 3. In addition, Sport Floor 1 and Sport Floor 3 have greater dissipative properties and are therefore potentially able to significantly dampen the impact energy of the ball when it comes into contact with the sports floor under examination.
