14:40   Sports engineering education
Chair: Rachel Obbard
14:40
20 mins
USE OF IMAGE BASED CASE-STUDIES FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING MECHANICS TO SPORTS STUDENTS
Heather Driscoll, Tom Allen, John Hart
Abstract: Engineering mechanics is a fundamental topic required for both undergraduate and postgraduate level sports engineering and technology students. It can often be difficult to motivate and engage the sport focussed students in the theoretical aspects of the topic, especially if they are without a strong mathematical background. Through our teaching and public engagement experience, we have found that there are many sporting examples that can be used to explain some of the basic concepts in mechanics. Visualising and capturing the mechanics and physics associated with sports equipment in action, is however typically challenging due to the high-speed nature, and often invisible, sport interactions. These can be revealed through the use of high-speed video, photogrammetry, computational simulation, and experimental flow visualisation. All of these techniques can be used to generate powerful imagery that provides fresh and innovate insight of physics. This is known to not only captivate attention, but can be used to effectively initiate discourse. Through our own research, and that published in the field, we now have access to a range of high quality images that have been generated using these techniques. These have often been applied to inform research for sports governing bodies and international equipment manufacturers. This in turn generates additional interest among the students as the research is grounded to a physical product, or sport, they are familiar with. This paper outlines three cases-studies in which we have used sports images to help explain the following concepts in engineering mechanics; 1) Vibrations: finite element simulation of a tennis racket and accompanying high-speed footage; 2) Coefficient of restitution: high-speed images and strobe photography of football bounce; 3) Boundary layers: smoke separation visualisation from a cricket ball in a wind tunnel.
15:00
20 mins
JUST ANOTHER TITLE? MSC. HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING VERSUS SPORTS ENGINEERING
Veit Senner, Carmen Aringer, Klaus Bengler
Abstract: Winter term 2011 a new study course MSc. Human Factors Engineering (HFE) has been started at TUM Munich School of Engineering. Like most courses at German public Universities this program is free of tuition and teaching language is German. This four semester study course (120 ECTS) is open for graduates holding a bachelor’s degree either in engineering science, natural science or humanities such as medicine or psychology. More precise admission criteria have been defined and request passed exams (4 ECTS each) in three of six competence fields: mathematics, computer science, mechanics, cognition, research methods and construction. Sports Engineering is one of three possible focus areas the students can chose by selecting certain required and elective modules. The main reason why we have not decided for realizing an own sports engineering master is the observation that there are less job opportunities in sports industry than we might expect from its world wide turn over. To our experience sports industry seems to be a lot more marketing than R&D-oriented, from which follows that more marketing and sales persons than engineers are required. In contrary we see a lot more opportunities for engineers in the field of human factors because this field addresses a huge variety of topics. The scientific journal Human Factors (SAGE publisher) gives an impressive collection of topics related to this discipline. From this overview it becomes obvious, that sports technology is a small subgroup of all those products and services that can be managed by HFE graduates. And it also reveals that a graduate of HFE may work in the design of sports technology but inversely a sports engineer would probably not be hired by the manufacturer of automobiles when it comes to improve the ergonomics of the work space at their assembly line. However: This variety of topics HFE may address requests an extended expertise in methods. For this reason we have decided for an interdisciplinary study course, which offers the engineers the opportunity to get an insight to the wide method spectrum of social science and especially to psychology. In return the students with psychology as their background will have to learn the basics of programming. The presentation will report of our five years’ experience with this master’s course, giving more details on how it is structured and how the students have been evaluating it.
15:20
20 mins
THE ISEA WINTERSCHOOL IN SPORTS ENGINEERING: 5 YEARS OF EDUCATION AND TEAM BUILDING EXPERIENCES
Nicola Petrone, Stephan Odenwald, Veit Senner
Abstract: The International Sports Engineering Association (ISEA) is the association of engineers interested to sports technology: among its fundamental aims, there is the educational effort, oriented to give to future Sports Engineers the widest and richest opportunity to learn, apply and develop the engineering approach applied to the sport practitioners and equipments. Following the experience of ISEA Summer schools, hold early on in Italy and Chemnitz, on 2011 we proposed to ISEA board the organization of the first ISEA Winterschool, to be held in San Vito di Cadore, Italy, with the twinned organization of the University of Padova and Technical University of Chemnitz. The three authors of this paper, together with Prof. Martin Strangwood (UK) took part to that first experience: we hosted 25 students coming from 6 different countries from around the word. In addition, 8 tutors were involved for the organization of practical sessions and some industry representatives came to sponsor the event. The students were divided into 5-6 groups of 5-6 students, following the intentional criterion of mixing the student nationality and background to foster the exchange of experiences and new collaborative relations. To each group, a research question was assigned to be addressed in the four following days. The format of the event was the combination of Theoretical lectures, read by professors active in the field of Sports Engineering, technical sessions, with the application of sensors to wintersport equipments and data acquisition systems for a “hands-on” approach, and field test sessions, when equipments and data collection systems prepared by students were be used in the slopes. The time span of the Winterschool was typically of 5 days: field tests were performed on the first two days, whereas data collection was carried out until the afternoon of the fourth day, when each group was asked to present their assigned project. Teachers and industry representative acted as a jury to rank the groups and award the Winterschool best group presentation. Over the years, Winterschool topics changed, from measurement systems to research methods, equipment performance, biomechanics and wintersport safety issues: as well, a number of colleagues joined the team of teachers, bringing their expertise and instrumentation to perform the tests. Martin Strangwood (UK), Mont Hubbard (USA), James Mc Neal (USA), Andrey Koptyug (SWE), Alessandro Pezzoli (IT), Uwe Kersting (DK), Martino Colonna (IT), Matej Supej (SLO), Matthias Gilgien (NOR). Also a number of companies supported the event bringing their wintersport materials (Nordica, Tecnica, Blizzard, Dal Bello, Dainese, Vibram) or their instrumentations (HBM, IMC, Kyowa, National Instruments, Moticon). A key factor for the success of experience was the logistic support from the University of Padova, Department of Forestry Sciences: the lectures and practical sessions took place at the Center for Forestry Researches in San Vito di Cadore, equipped with a lecture hall, several laboratory rooms and a small flat for the accommodation of tutors in self catering. This, together with the voluntary contribution of teachers, the coverage of teachers travel costs by the University of Padova, some support from ISEA association allowed to lower the registration cost for students, covering only their accommodation at the Hotel Park des Dolomites and Hotel Dolomiti, located at walking distance from the University Centre. Results of this experience are several: a total number of 150 students from 10 countries took part to the school. Several of them carried on a master project or a PhD focusing on Sports Engineering afterwards. Some of the group pilot tests were completed by the teachers and subsequently published as research or conference papers. Scientific collaborations between teachers lead to common test sessions and further publications. Erasmus agreements were set and student exchanges took place between Universities involved in the collaboration. We believe that the experience can be extended to other countries and other fields of sports, such as athletics, cycling or ball sports, with the important result of building the sports engineers and scientists community towards a wide network of collaborative relations.