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Barefoot Traction Testing in Indian Bathrooms: A Novel Experimental Framework

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Tribology for Energy, Environment and Society (ICOIT 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering ((LNME))

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Abstract

Barefoot slips and falls are common in Indian bathrooms. However, to date, there have been limited experimental works to understand barefoot traction on slippery bathroom floorings. This is majorly due to the lack of any barefoot simulant, which is structurally, materially, or tribologically like the human foot. In context, this pioneering work consisted of designing and fabricating a human foot simulant for barefoot slip testing, and a novel experimental framework was developed for slip testing of this simulant on realistic dry and wet surfaces. Imaging and additive manufacturing was employed to fabricate the simulant and tune its structural and mechanical properties with the foot. The coefficient of friction (COF) was measured using the simulants for short and medium-length slips on eight glazed porcelain tiles commonly found in Indian bathrooms. The COF was observed to decrease moderately from dry to wet flooring conditions, and drastically with the use of highly viscosity shampoo. Generalisable ACOF was measured across floorings for soap and shower gel-contaminated conditions. High repeatability and low intra-tile variations were also recorded for the traction tests with the simulant. The results from this study are anticipated to provide important guidelines for barefoot slip risk assessment in bathrooms and also assist in the selection of suitable anti-slip bathroom floorings in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Subhodip Chatterjee, Shubham Gupta & Arnab Chanda

Authors
  1. Subhodip Chatterjee
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  2. Shubham Gupta
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  3. Arnab Chanda
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arnab Chanda .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Sujeet Kumar Sinha

  2. Centre of Automotive Research and Tribology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, Delhi, India

    Deepak Kumar

  3. Materials Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, Delhi, India

    Nitya Nand Gosvami

  4. Materials Design and Innovation, University at Buffalo, State University, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Prathima Nalam

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Chatterjee, S., Gupta, S., Chanda, A. (2024). Barefoot Traction Testing in Indian Bathrooms: A Novel Experimental Framework. In: Sinha, S.K., Kumar, D., Gosvami, N.N., Nalam, P. (eds) Tribology for Energy, Environment and Society. ICOIT 2022. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9264-5_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9264-5_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-99-9264-5

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