The loss of the op­ti­cal im­pres­sion of floor­ings and the re­duc­tion in the life time as a re­sult of sur­face de­struc­tion only by walk­ing on the sur­faces is called wear. For re­duc­tion of the wear and in­creas­ing the life-time of film lay­ers and re­silient floor­ings, there are im­prove­ments in the clean­ing and main­te­nance nec­es­sary.

The wear-re­sis­tance of floor cov­er­ings de­pends on the abra­sion char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sur­faces. This sur­face prop­er­ties are based on the sur­face hard­ness of the floor­ings and the coat­ings.

Since now, only im­prac­ti­cal meth­ods to check the wear­ing qual­i­ty, like Taber-Abras­er- and Stuttgart-Tests are known. Both tests are Eu­ro­pean stan­dards (EN 660-1 and 660-2), which char­ac­terise the wear by mea­sur­ing the loss of weight and thick­ness of the floor­ings by scrub­bing with an abra­sive test-ma­te­ri­al on the sur­face. Cor­re­la­tion be­tween these lab­o­ra­to­ry meth­ods and the wear as a re­sult of real use can­not be made. Prac­tice re­lat­ing ex­per­i­ments, in which the wear de­pends on the human gait and real soil, are too time con­sum­ing and not re­pro­ducible.

There is a need for a prac­ti­cal method to study the im­pact of the sur­face prop­er­ties on the wear which sim­u­lates the human move­ment with a step-sim­u­la­tor. This in­cludes the re­pro­ducible ap­pli­ca­tion of a de­fined species, quan­ti­ty and size of dirt. Other im­por­tant pa­ram­e­ters are the mois­ture and the fre­quen­cy of use. In­flu­enc­ing fac­tors which de­pend on the floor­ings are the elas­tic­i­ty, the coat­ings and the ap­pli­ca­tion meth­ods.

To as­sess the quan­ti­ty of the ef­fect of the pa­ram­e­ters, there will be var­i­ous ob­jec­tive phys­i­cal mea­sure­ments, like the loss of weight and thick­ness, sur­face rough­ness, colour, bright­ness and re­flec­tion, adapt­ed. Based on these data there is an op­ti­mi­sa­tion of the wear re­sis­tance of floor­ings pos­si­ble. The main topic is an at­trac­tive look of the floor­ings whilst using.

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 12346 N) fund­ed by the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs.

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.