A Technical Textile: Artificial Grass

Technical textiles - one of the newer terms in the already wide vocabulary synonomous with artificial grass and astro turf type products. It's definitely not used by home owners nor by landscapers and sports pitch builders. So who might refer to artificial grass as a technical textile?

Well it seems to be popular with yarn manufacturers and tabloid financial editors when referring to companies that produce or deal in 'fibrous structures'. There is also the academic sector where people study technical textiles so they can work within or provide services to the international industrial textile community.

Artificial grass is only one of many, many types of technical textiles that might be studied - others include geosynthetics, composites and a whole range of industrial fabrics used in outdoor protective clothing, equipment and sportswear. And that's about as technical we're going to get on technical textiles! Our previous post on the vagaries of artificial grass terminology covers many of the other terms.

Anyone interested in a career in technical textiles might like to read the Centre For Technical Textiles in Leeds website.

Fake Grass To Astro Turf: Artificial Grass Terminology

Grass is a word we all know. Simple, clear and unequivocal in meaning. As a manufacturer of artificial grass, however, we are very much aware that there is no, one, single accepted term that describes the product we manufacture.

For example, we have some customers who never use the term artificial grass but instead call it fake grass and some who prefer the phrase synthetic grass; there are even people who call it plastic grass or faux grass. As if all of this weren't enough to confuse the issue, there are those who don't even use the word 'grass' but prefer the word turf - hence we find ourselves referring to an artficial turf email request or a telephone call about synthetic turf. There are also people who, in a similar way to using the term hoover for a vaccuum cleaner, use the term astro turf. Already in this one paragraph we have used no less than 8 different sets of terminology - and all to refer to the same thing!

All of this of course is at the consumer end of the spectrum and there's an entirely different set of terms used on the production line such as we have in our artificial grass factory here in the UK. On any given day you will hear a range of terms bandied about amongst our technicians - words that most people will never have heard of - such as creel, collector board, yarn sheet, dtex and fibrillation.

As the only UK artificial grass manufacturer selling direct to consumers, we enjoy a unique position of authority when it comes to understanding and explaining artificial grass terminology. This has enabled us to write our own artificial grass glossary which brings together both everyday and manufacturing terms. Hopefully it will benefit both our customers' understanding of artificial grass and also that of our growing network of distributors. Apart from that you never know, you might get asked at the next local pub quiz what a creel is!