What is Slip Resistance?
Slip resistance is the roughness of a floor that helps reduce slipping and falling. Slip resistant floors create the friction needed to avoid a fall. A metric called coefficient of friction is used to determine how slippery a floor is and what level of friction is required. COF is used to determine how slippery a floor is and what level of friction is required. COF refers to the amount of force needed to hold the foot and the floor in place and prevent sliding.
Factors to Consider for Anti-Slip Flooring
Before choosing a slip resistant flooring option and the coefficient of friction needed for a floor, you will need to test the floor. You want to check what would affect the slip resistant quality of the floor. Some of these factors are cleaning, contamination, deterioration, traffic patterns and more. Depending on what activities take place above the floor, anti-slip flooring may be intense or mild. For spaces where cleaning ought to be a priority, the slip resistance of the floor would be less intense because it is more difficult to clean floors with higher slip resistant features.
Anti-Slip Test Methods
Anti-slip tests are conducted to determine how much friction a floor needs. There are many testing methods that can be employed. Let's consider the most common ones.
Wet Pendulum Test
This test is used on wet floors to imitate a pedestrian heel strike that causes a slip. When the heel strikes a wet floor, the contact creates a fluid film that causes the slip. The method can also be used to test the possibility of slips on dry floors, clean floors, and contaminated floors. This testing method works well to determine slip potential in the conditions where slip accidents occur.
Oily Ramp Method
This anti-slip test is carried out in the laboratory. Anti-slip floorings are rated by "R" with R/12 or more rating indicating high aggressiveness of the floors. The oily ramp test gauges slip potential using this rating. It is conducted using an oily surface and is used to replicate foot traffic in that condition and the potential of slips and falls.
Benefits of Anti-Slip Flooring
Anti-slip flooring is essential for ensuring the health and safety of everyone moving within a building. Considering the hazards that falling can cause, anti-slip flooring is very important. Some of its benefits include:
- Preventing slips and falls and avoiding the cost and health and safety implications that come with them.
- Ensuring work environment safety and increasing productivity as a result.
- Anti-slip flooring application does not disrupt normal activities ongoing in the facility.
- It reduces administrative costs in commercial facilities by eliminating the potential of fall accidents within the building.
Anti-slip flooring can protect the reputation of your business environment. It's easy to apply it when you allow the professionals at Dr. Epoxy help you with the process.
