The present work investigates two floor materials that are used in hospitals, operating rooms, intensive care units and factories. It is proposed to measure the electrostatic charge (ESC) generated on polypropylene shoes during walking against the tested floor materials. The tested floor materials are provided by different numbers of copper strips adhered to their back, the strips are grounded to guarantee the leakage of the generated ESC. This test is carried under dry and water/chlorine dilution conditions. The experimental results showed that ESC increases by the increase of the normal load. Also, the measured voltage increases as the number of copper strips increases, where the strips work as conductor. In the case of water/chlorine wet contact surface, voltage displayed lower values than that generated at dry condition. It be concluded that the copper strips have increased the conductivity of floor material, where the grounding system significantly decreases the voltage by approximately 66% and 71% in the two tested floor materials.
Khashaba et al. (Sun,) studied this question.