Artificial turf & Yarn Classification and Application

Artificial turf is currently used in a wide range of applications, from building hoardings to engineering greenery, from kindergarten grounds to playgrounds in schools and universities, and from football to basketball and tennis to golf courses. Some people say that the more expensive the artificial turf is, the quality is better, but that’s only half true, there is a Chinese saying that good steel is used in the blade.  Expensive turf is different from cheaper turf in terms of materials and production processes, but if expensive turf such as golf grass used for construction fencing is improper and too wasteful.

How do you choose the right artificial turf?

The first place to start is to understand the basic structure of artificial turf.

The artificial turf mainly consists of backing fabric, grass yarn and coating, and the grass yarn is the main material, which is related to the service life of the artificial turf, application scenarios and ultimately determines the price of artificial turf.

1. Material

According to the raw materials, artificial grass yarn is mainly divided into polyethene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and nylon (Nylon/PA)

(The picture shows the raw material for the production of football grass, low-density polyethene PE)

• Low-density polyethene granules are used to extrude the grass through the yarn machine, as the PE material is soft and has better UV resistance, and is mainly used to fill artificial turf in football fields.
• Polypropylene is a harder material with good resistance to wear and tear, but less resistant to UV light. PP material is used for tennis courts, basketball, running tracks and other sports fields and usually requires the addition of the anti-UV additive. Non-infilling football turf and landscape grass are mostly PE (straight yarn) + PP (bent yarn).
• Nylon has strong tensile strength, wear resistance, small coefficient of friction, flame retardant, easy to cause skin burns and poor dyeability. Therefore, it is mainly used for golf batting cushions and hockey fields.

2. Yarn Shape

According to the shape of the yarn, artificial grass is mainly divided into the Stem, Diamond Shape, U-shaped, C-shaped, S-shaped and many other different shapes.

(The picture shows the grass yarn model, the C-shaped grass yarn is extruded through this model)

In the beginning, conventional artificial turf football grass was mostly monofilament with stems. As the use of artificial turf escalated and artificial turf manufacturers continued to innovate, various shapes of shaped artificial turf began to come onto the market. For example, S-shaped and U-shaped grass yarns, which are S and U-shaped in cross-section, are most commonly used in infill football turf, U-shaped grass filaments have the best uprightness and are easy to fill with sand and granules, S-shaped can quickly return to uprightness even with frequent use; diamond-shaped grass filaments, are thicker and more wear-resistant in the middle and are mostly used in sports grounds that require a longer service life; C-shaped S-shaped grass yarns are mostly used in non-infilling sports artificial turf, because of its unique uprightness, it can visually show the structure of the straight and curly yarn.

3. Application

Different raw materials with the same specifications and at different prices. Relatively speaking, nylon is the most expensive, and the relative price of artificial turf for golf courses and hockey pitches is much higher than that of football turf. Football turf made of PE, on the other hand, is relatively softer and more resistant to ageing than turf made of PP alone and is slightly more expensive in comparison. However, straight yarn and curly yarn twisted turf made up of PE+PP is relatively more costly than monofilament grass due to its higher density.

If the grass is used for football, the weight needs to be over 14,000 pounds to be used for football. The lower weight of the grass is too thin to support the grass, so the overall footing is poor and lacks cushioning. However, by choosing the higher specifications of non-infill artificial turf for football grass, the effect of filling can be achieved at the same time as the cost of a filling is lower. Kindergarten playing fields need softer grass, so choose a lower weight but denser straight yarn and curly yarn twisted grass.

4.Contact Us

With the introduction of this article, I believe that most people have a good understanding of how to choose a suitable artificial turf. In the future, Tiger Lily Garden will be more committed to sharing more useful information about artificial turf, and artificial yarn and developing more