Functional levels of floor surface roughness for the prevention of slips and falls: clean-and-dry and soapsuds-covered wet surfaces

Details

• Personal Author:
  Hsiao H ; Kim I-J ; Simeonov P
• Description:
  Literature has shown a general trend that slip resistance performance improves with floor surface roughness. However, whether slip resistance properties are linearly correlated with surface topographies of the floors or what roughness levels are required for effective slip resistance performance still remain to be answered. This pilot study aimed to investigate slip resistance properties and identify functional levels of floor surface roughness for practical design applications in reducing the risk of slip and fall incidents. A theory model was proposed to characterize functional levels of surface roughness of floor surfaces by introducing a new concept of three distinctive zones. A series of dynamic friction tests were conducted using 3 shoes and 9 floor specimens under clean-and-dry as well as soapsuds-covered slippery wet environments. The results showed that all the tested floor-shoe combinations provided sufficient slip resistances performance under the clean-and-dry condition. A significant effect of floor type (surface roughness) on dynamic friction coefficient (DFC) was found in the soapsuds-covered wet condition. As compared to the surface roughness effects, the shoe-type effects were relatively small. Under the soapsuds-covered wet condition, floors with 50 µm in Ra roughness scale seemed to represent an upper bound in the functional range of floor surface roughness for slip resistance because further increase of surface roughness provided no additional benefit. A lower bound of the functional range for slip resistance under the soapsuds-covered wet condition was estimated from the requirement of DFC > 0.4 at Ra = 17 µm. Findings from this study may have potential safety implications in the floor surface design for reducing slip and fall hazards. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Accidental Falls Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Detergents Ergonomics Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Accident-potential Accident-prevention Analytical-models Author Keywords: Floor Surfaces Fall-protection Floors Footwear Human-factors-engineering Injuries Injury-prevention Materials-testing Roughness Heights Shoes Slip Resistance Soap-products Surface-properties Surface Roughness Walking-surfaces

  More +
• ISSN:
  0003-6870
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  58-64
• Volume:
  44
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20040878
• Citation:
  Appl Ergon 2013 Jan; 44(1):58-64
• Contact Point Address:
  In-Ju Kim, Safety Research and Solutions, 70 William Hudson Crescent, Monash, ACT 2904, Australia
• Email:
  slipsafety@gmail.com
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2013
• NORA Priority Area:
  Construction
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Applied Ergonomics
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5d45966fd089d526c26dba50b55ff359d6c719586c879752422c82c064f1b284778fe25826d1ed888b9b145d71befc9bed4a3d1fca00335e53d92aa64e1de015
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/193589/cdc_193589_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 519.50 KB ]