No abstract

Background: To prevent slip and fall events at the workplace, mechanical slip testing is conducted on shoes. Such experiments may involve redundant testing across floorings and contaminant conditions, causing wasted time and effort. Purpose: Quantify the correlations between shoe traction across different contaminant-flooring conditions to reduce redundant slip testing efforts. Methods: The available coefficient-of-friction (ACOF) was quantified for 17 shoes across five floorings and three contaminant conditions. Redundant testing conditions were identified when the shoe ACOF values for one floor-contaminant condition were highly correlated with a second floorcontaminant condition. Results: High correlations were observed among quarry floorings across different contaminants and among vinyl (composite tile) floorings with the same contaminant. However, vinyl floorings exhibited low correlations with quarry floorings. Low correlations were also observed across contaminants within vinyl tiles. Conclusions: This study was able to determine the generalizability of traction performance of shoes across vinyl and quarry floorings. This information is anticipated to reduce redundant traction testing of shoes across vinyl and quarry floorings.

No abstract

High traction flooring and slip-resistant shoes are often used to reduce slip and fall accidents. However, the relative contribution and interactions across these parameters on available coefficient of friction (ACOF) are not well understood. The purpose of this study was to quantify the impact of flooring and slip-resistant shoes on ACOF. Seventeen shoes, five flooring tiles and three contaminants were tested using a robotic slip-tester, while ACOF was measured. ACOF was higher for slip-resistant shoes than not slip-resistant shoes. Larger effects were observed for shoe classification compared with flooring. Interaction effects indicated that the gap across shoe classifications was greater for the high ACOF floorings compared to the low ACOF floorings. This study suggests that the benefit of combining high traction flooring and slip-resistant shoes exceed the summed benefit of these factors and has the potential to reduce slipping events.