Assessment of flooring slipperiness for food industry buildings

One of the most common causes of accidents in food industry buildings is slipping caused, in particular, by the spilling of liquid substances on the floor, which reduces the coefficient of friction between floor and sole. The aim of this study was to assess the performance of the most common types of flooring used in the food industry, where, owing to the characteristics of the manufacturing stages, the probability of liquid spilling is higher. Five different types of flooring, usually utilized in the food industry, were tested: two unglazed gres tiles and three resin floors. The tiles were different in surface shape: one was flat (gres A), the other was a tile with embossed surface (gres B). The surface of the resin used was made up of a three-component polyurethane/cement-based mortar (resin A), a two-component epoxy (resin B) and a two-component epoxy in water dispersion (resin C). To classify a surface as anti-slip the Dynamic Friction Coefficient (DFC) was measured in five different conditions (dry, wet with distilled water, contaminated by olive oil, cow’s milk and red wine) and with three types of sliders (leather only for dry condition, rubber and synthetic for contaminated conditions) for each floor panel. The analysis of ANOVA showed that the slipping properties of the floors did not depend only on surface roughness but also on the chemical characteristics of the surfaces in contact with each other (sole surface/floor)