Standard of Care?
In addition to the chemistry of synthetics terms and the physics of wood, floor buyers must learn the alphabet soup of certifications. Currently, there is no one, unified standards system that covers all aspects of performance, installation and design for sports surfaces, but a number of organizations cover portions of these issues. They include:
DIN Deutsches Institut fur Normug eV.—German industrial standards that are the most widely used for sports surfaces. They specify performance standards and monitor quality but do not specify design codes.
ASTM American Society for Testing Materials—These standards show a product has passed guidelines for various characteristics, such as abrasion resistance, indentation, coefficient of friction and fire resistance. ASTM standards tend to appear most frequently in marketing artificial turf.
IAAF International Association of Athletic Federations—This track-and-field organization launched a certification system for track surfaces in 1999. To obtain the highest level of certification, samples of the actual, installed surface must be sent for testing.
FIFA The International Soccer Federation's Quality Concept sets quality goals for soccer equipment and licenses manufacturers that adhere to artificial-turf criteria.
 | PHOTO COURTESY OF MITCHELL RUBBER PRODUCTS | |
ISO International Organization for Standardization—Like the ASTM, the ISO outlines manufacturing and quality requirements for a variety of flooring surfaces. Many products note they meet ISO 9000 or 9001 standards.
Without an alternative, DIN remains the gold standard for flooring, but many in the field would like to see a North American system that includes design parameters and human performance test results.
Cannon/Johnston's Bob Johnston says he believes that the push to standardize surface testing standards, per se, will come from the sports-surfacing industry itself rather than the design community, in order to provide a competitive edge and separate themselves from their competitors. He notes some professionals in sports sciences, such as those at the University of Calgary, discount the importance of standards, since their research has shown that standardized tests have limited success in predicting a surface's biomechanical properties.
Many good floors do not specifically comply with DIN, adds BSA's Ross, saying that while it makes a good guideline, DIN standards don't provide a true measure of performance.
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