Project staff and support

José Gomez (Intern, Sheffield Hallam University)
Adam Sotheran (Company supervisor, British Swimming)
Steve Haake (Academic mentor, Sheffield Hallam University)
Tim Boxer (Technology Translator, Industrial Mathematics KTN)

This Internship project was carried out at Pond's Forge International Sports Centre, in conjunction with Sheffield Hallam University. It is part of the KTN's Industrial Mathematics Internships programme, co-funded by EPSRC. Start date: April 2009; duration: 6 months.

British Swimming Coaches wish to instruct their divers on the optimum way to use springboards during their performances. The material stiffness of the board is fixed, while the length can be altered by the diver by moving the board’s main pivot point. The optimum dive can be achieved by setting the board oscillating during the ‘hurdle-step’ along the board and then timing the final jump at the end of the board to give the required linear and angular momentum of the takeoff.

“We have seen some intriguing results from this project which has challenged some of our fundamental thinking in coaching in diving. We now want to take more video to corroborate this new thinking,” said industrial supervisor Adam Sotheran, British Swimming coach.

Project overview

The collaborating university, Sheffield Hallam University, undertook a project on the ‘Modelling of diving springboards’ to create an integrated modelling environment for the optimisation of positions, velocities and accelerations of a springboard due to different inputs such as applied force, diver mass, fulcrum settings for simulated dives.

This internship project embedded novel models of springboards from classic beam theory, finite elements theory and computer vision methods. All these elements have been used to implement a model to analyse the most important parameters during a take off diving performance.

The project has provided Sheffield Hallam University with the ability to simulate dives and compare them with reality. This capability is intended for use by diving coaches during training sessions to be able to check how a dive could be improved.

“The problem was seemingly simple, but the more we got into it the harder the problem became. We realised that we didn’t understand the bounce of the diving board well enough and Jose and British Swimming did a great job in providing us with enough videos and information for analysis. This then allowed the models to progress through to a conclusion where they now are making predictions that may help our divers at London 2012,” said the academic supervisor Steve Haake, Head of Sports Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University.