Funny walking on slippery floor in laboratory

Enjoy the funny sliding motions of the female subject and compare them to the guy rushing on the same walking surface but with other shoes. The stainless steel surface was covered with glycerol in both cases.

In my Swedish research group we carried out these and other experiments with walking subjects in the early 1980's (sorry for poor image and sound quality). However, the results are still relevant and have been presented 20 years later in the U.S. as state-of-the-art in biomechanics and tribology.

Force and motion measurements revealed three necessary requirements for slip-resistance on surfaces with viscous contaminants like mud or melting snow:
Drainage, Draping and Damping.

Without DRAINING capacity of the tire tread or sole pattern, the rubber cannot drape itself around the asperities of the solid surface.
And without DRAPING the DAMPING properties of the rubber are useless. Cf. my video clip with two different types of rubber - one high damping hysteresis rubber and one elastic without damping.

For scientific details: see my papers in the literature. Co-authors are e.g. Håkan Lanshammar from University of Uppsala in Sweden, Raoul Grönqvist and others at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

To the memory of medical student Lars Hildeskog, who controlled the experiments, maintained the laboratory and operated the computerized equipment - in spite of his painful disease, which took his life a few years later.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• slip and fall
• slip-resistance
• adhesion
• friction
• traction
• tire
• tyre
• walking
• gait
• shoe
• sole
• slippery
• floors
• skidding
• hydroplaning
• aquaplaning
• mud