Barefoot slip risk assessment of Indian manufactured ceramic flooring tiles

Abstract

Barefoot slips and falls are commonly reported across different floorings in Indian households and apartments. Due to lack of awareness on how to prevent such incidents, they are often neglected, and may lead to recurrent and severe traumatic injuries. To date, footwear based slip testing methods were widely employed for slip risk assessment, however there have been limited studies on characterization of barefoot slips. In this work, a novel human barefoot surrogate was fabricated to study barefoot slip safety of common ceramic flooring tiles. The available coefficient of friction (ACOF) under barefoot condition was characterized across the flooring tiles in dry and wet conditions and also in the presence of Lizol floor cleaner as a contaminant. The ACOF measured with the novel human barefoot surrogate was found to be repeatable across all slippery conditions. Barefoot ACOF was reported to be the lowest for the Lizol contamination. Generalizable trends of ACOF were identified for a few floor-contaminant combinations. The results would be indispensable for understanding the barefoot slip risk on contaminated common Indian floorings, and also provide important guidelines for selecting flooring as an intervention against barefoot slips and falls.