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Frictional Assessment of Low-Cost Shoes in Worn Conditions Across Workplaces

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Abstract

Slips and falls across the workplaces account for several fatal and non-fatal traumatic injuries worldwide. Consequences of these accidents include deterioration of the overall quality of living and increased economical strains through hospitalization and compensation costs. Unintentional slips usually occur due to a sudden decrease in the friction of shoes and the floorings. Due to low purchasing parity in the low- or middle-income countries (such as India), awareness related to the footwear’s slip resistance performance often goes neglected. Due to this, the public commonly choose to buy low-cost footwear. Also, footwear traction performance deteriorates with progressive wearing. Therefore, assessing the performance of footwear in new and worn-out conditions across common slippery situations is essential. In this work, ten Indian-manufactured formal shoes were assessed for its slip-resistant performance across three common floorings in dry- and water-contaminated conditions using a novel slip testing device. The results indicated that most of the selected low-cost footwear showed high slip risks across wet flooring conditions. Shoes with absence or worn-out treads at the heel region led to the availability of much lower friction at the shoe–floor interface. Shoes with soft outsoles, when worn, exhibited large worn areas and high slipping risks as compared to the ones with hard outsoles (R2 = 0.92). The findings from this study are anticipated to lead to better understanding of the slip risks associated with low-cost formal footwear in India, as well as provide guidelines for their selection and timely replacement.

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Data Availability

The data generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to large dataset but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

We would like to acknowledge the funding support received from SERB-DST and IRD, IIT Delhi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Biomedical Engineering (CBME), Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi), New Delhi, India

    Shubham Gupta, Subhodip Chatterjee, Ayush Malviya & Arnab Chanda

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, AIIMS: All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Arnab Chanda

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Contributions

SG contributed to methodology; validation; investigation; formal analysis; writing of the original draft; and writing-, reviewing, and editing of the manuscript. SC contributed to methodology; data curation; formal analysis; and investigation. Ayush Malviya contributed to data curation; investigation; and formal analysis. AC contributed to conceptualization; methodology; formal analysis; supervision, and writing, reviewing, and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Arnab Chanda.

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Gupta, S., Chatterjee, S., Malviya, A. et al. Frictional Assessment of Low-Cost Shoes in Worn Conditions Across Workplaces. J Bio Tribo Corros 9, 23 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40735-023-00741-0

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