Increasing Safety of Walking by Using Rubber Floor

Rubber floors are used for indoor application such as gym, kid gardens and hospitals. They protect both the footwear and floor from being scratched. Rubber floors of thick mats offer durable and elastic behavior as well as shock absorption. They are less sensitive to chips, cracks, and fragmentation in the working area. Their thickness is one of the factors affecting their durability. As the thickness of the rubber mat increases, injuries are reduced by relieving stress on joints, legs, and feet and absorb physical impacts and vibration. The present work discusses the effect of the rubber floor thickness and hardness on the friction coefficient displayed by the walking of rubber footwear against dry and water wet rubber floor. It was found that friction coefficient decreased with increasing rubber hardness due to decrease of deformation. Friction coefficient increased when normal load increased. Increasing thickness gave significant effect on increasing friction coefficient. Friction coefficient decreased with increasing normal load due to saturation of the rubber asperities and rubber filling the gaps between the contact asperities. At water wet sliding, friction coefficient increased up to maximum with increasing rubber floor thickness due to increase of the deformation. Rubber of the lowest hardness displayed relatively the highest values of friction coefficient although the rubber floor was covered by water film. Critical floor thickness displayed the highest friction. Further thickness increase showed slight friction decrease.