Understanding Friction and Wear Behaviours of Smooth Resilient Surfaces: Application for Pedestrian Fall Safety Improvements

The recent literature identified that certain types of smooth floors and flooring materials showed good slip-resistance performance under moderately contaminated situations such as water wet and soapsuds-covered conditions. However, topographic structures of such flat floor/walkway surfaces are significantly changed by wear and tear developments with continuous ambulation. A number of reasons seem to be involved in flooring wear developments, but such changes may result in substantial losses of slip resistance (or traction) functions. Even though the importance of this issue is wide, it is scarce to find any systematic investigations on tribophysical characteristics of smooth floors (