A comparison of results from portable and laboratory floor slipperiness testers.

Abstract The slip resistance of many commercial floor coverings used in a wide range of applications was measured with the British Pendulum Tester, the Tortus II and the Ramp test under dry and wet conditions. The repeatability and validity of the results of these methods were considered. The results showed that British Pendulum is able to diversify between dry and wet conditions, moreover ANOVA showed that it is possible to discriminate different materials. Results obtained with Tortus revealed that this device cannot distinguish between dry and wet measurements, but it is able to discriminate dissimilar materials. Ramp test can differentiate materials, but it produces different results depending on the test person involved; its repeatability can be seriously questioned. Generally, the results indicated that the ranking of materials depends highly on the slipmeters and surface conditions. Relevance to industry It is impossible to find a univocal correlation between results obtained by different methods, but flooring manufacturers need to verify and optimise the anti-slipperiness of their products. Then a new approach to obtain a “gold” standard that avoid to reconcile the differences in numerical results of the various tribometers and based on a set of external calibration materials could be a more useful flooring resistance tester.