The aim of this pro­ject was the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of clean­ing and care meth­ods for floor cov­er­ings with re­gard to slip re­sis­tance and the de­vel­op­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ate test­ing method. Dif­fer­ent floor cov­er­ings were char­ac­terised with re­gard to slip re­sis­tance. For this pur­pose, the co­ef­fi­cients of slid­ing fric­tion were mea­sured by using the mo­bile mea­sur­ing units FSC 2000 Print and GMG 100. Fur­ther­more, the ma­te­ri­als were in­ves­ti­gat­ed by using a robot sim­u­lat­ing human walk­ing move­ments in a re­pro­ducible and re­al­is­tic way, which was de­vel­oped with­in the pro­ject. By using this robot, walk­ing was sim­u­lat­ed on a spe­cial plate which was con­nect­ed with force sen­sors.

Ap­ply­ing the meth­ods men­tioned above, 16 dif­fer­ent PVC-ma­te­ri­als, 4 linoleum ma­te­ri­als, 1 rub­ber ma­te­ri­al, 1 poly­olefin ma­te­ri­al and 3 dif­fer­ent safe­ty tiles were char­ac­terised with re­gard to slip re­sis­tance. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the in­flu­ence of 7 dif­fer­ent clean­ing and 8 dif­fer­ent care agents was in­ves­ti­gat­ed using a PVC-ma­te­ri­al as an ex­am­ple. Only in the case of the linoleum ma­te­ri­als the re­sults were in­suf­fi­cient.

Dur­ing clean­ing and care mea­sures, wax con­tain­ing prod­ucts should only be used if they meet cer­tain re­quire­ments re­gard­ing slip re­sis­tance. In the case of spe­cial re­quire­ments for slip re­sis­tance, poly­mer dis­per­sions in com­bi­na­tion with high speed-treat­ments showed ad­van­tages com­pared to con­ven­tion­al dis­per­sions. The in­flu­ence of wear, soil and hu­mid­i­ty was also in­ves­ti­gat­ed: Dust and grit as well as slid­ing liq­uids lead to re­duced co­ef­fi­cients of slid­ing fric­tion. Wear caus­es also a lower slip re­sis­tance.

All these neg­a­tive im­pacts on slip re­sis­tance, how­ev­er, can be com­pen­sat­ed by suit­able clean­ing and care mea­sures. Using the new test­ing method for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of slid­ing co­ef­fi­cients based on the com­bi­na­tion of a force de­ter­mi­na­tion plate and a walk­ing robot, a type test of dif­fer­ent floor cov­er­ings is pos­si­ble. The mea­sur­ing range com­pris­es val­ues from 0.04 (slip­ping on a ba­nana peel) to > 1 (stat­ic fric­tion). In the case of mo­bile test­ing units, such val­ues, as a rule, lead to mea­sur­ing er­rors.

Al­though the mo­bile test­ing units are not suit­able for the com­plete char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of slip re­sis­tance prop­er­ties, they can be used to a cer­tain ex­tent for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of clean­ing in­ter­vals and for check­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of mea­sures for the im­prove­ment of slip re­sis­tance.

Ac­knowl­edge­ments

We would like to thank the Ar­beits­ge­mein­schaft In­dus­trieller Forschungsvere­ini­gun­gen “Otto von Gu­er­icke” e.V. (AiF) (As­so­ci­a­tion of In­dus­tri­al Re­search Or­gan­i­sa­tions) for the fi­nan­cial sup­port of the reasearch pro­ject (AiF 11754 N) fund­ed by the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs. Fur­ther­more the wfk-In­sti­tute would like to thank dif­fer­ent mem­ber com­pa­nies for sup­port­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.