Sports engineering

Sports engineering is a field of engineering that involves the design, development and testing of sports equipment. The equipment used by athletes has always gone through technological design and development based on current knowledge and understanding. Sports engineering only became official in 1998 when the Sports Engineering Research Group and the International Sports Engineering Association were formed at the University of Sheffield. Since then, the field has grown immensely and now involves many universities, sports companies, regulatory bodies and sports clubs across the world.
Sports engineers are typically involved in the following activities:
Equipment design: designing and building new equipment based on the requirements of athletes. e.g. racing wheelchair design
Lab experiments and testing: measuring the behaviour of equipment, athletes and their interaction in a controlled environment. e.g. measuring football boot traction
Computational modelling: simulating the forces acting on athletes and their equipment (Finite Element Analysis) or simulating the airflow around equipment (Computational Fluid Dynamics). e.g. football aerodynamic analysis
Field testing: recording the behaviour of sports equipment in a match environment. e.g. high-speed video recording of tennis players hitting the ball
Working with governing bodies: assessing the effects of rule changes or understanding injury risks.
Working with athletes: working together to improve their performance.
Sports engineers come from a range of disciples that are involved with sports. These included sport science disciplines and engineering disciplines involved in the sports industry. Historically they have an MEng degree in Mechanical Engineering or Sports Engineering, and many go on to undertake further research in the form of a PhD. As the sports industry goes progressively high tech electronics engineers have become more involved in the discipline.
The majority of sports engineering research in UK universities is done at Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam, Loughborough, Bath, Strathclyde and Queen Mary’s (London). In Australia an electronics based Sports Engineering degree was launched at Griffith University in 2009
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