Assessment of Slip Potential on Safety Flooring

Many tests exist for assessing floor surface slip resistance. These can, in some cases, produce conflicting results, particularly for certain types of surface textures.

This project will focus on barefoot slips that could occur in the home, in, for example, bathrooms, or in a changing room wet area, in a gym or swimming pool.

A range of floor surface types produced for such scenarios will be tested using a range of existing ’standard’ methodologies to find out where deficiencies may lie and new test methods will be proposed and trialled.

One particular focus will be the development of a foot or heel simulant to use in testing to remove reliance on human test candidates which introduce a lot of scatter.

The work will be supported by flooring manufacturers and the Health and Safety Laboratories.