As pointed out elsewhere in these pages, Safety Direct America has general liability and professional liability (Errors and Omissions) to cover our floor slip resistance testing work for clients located in the USA. However, we often do laboratory or field floor slip test work for foreign clients, sometimes on their own premises, e.g. in Canada […]
Tag Archives: slip resistance testing
Germany’s DIN 51130 Slip Test: What’s it Good For?
In Europe, a slip resistance test for flooring is prescribed by German Institute for Normalization (DIN) standard DIN 51130. A person wearing industrial-type treaded shoes walks, facing down slope, on a variable-angle ramp which has the flooring to be tested on it. The flooring is coated with motor oil. The walker (without holding the handrails) […]
New Study Shows Sotter Engineering to be one of World’s Most Accurate Pendulum Floor Slip Test Labs
A recent global interlaboratory program “Slip Resistance Proficiency Testing — Pendulum Friction Tester,” showed Sotter Engineering Corporation’s Safety Direct America (SDA) floor slip resistance testing laboratory to be one of the world’s most accurate in use of the pendulum skid tester. The pendulum is a national standard for pedestrian floor and tile slip resistance testing […]
ASTM F2508 and the pendulum slip resistance tester
ASTM F2508 is based on a rigorous scientific study of 11 tribometers (or floor slip resistance test devices) that was held at the University of Southern California Medical Center. The peer-reviewed results were published in 2010 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Four tiles were tested with the 11 slip test devices, and later a […]
DCOF Rating for Floors
The latest American slip test for floors is the DCOF rating test method specified in ANSI A326.3. Although this test is a much better test than the now-withdrawn ASTM C1028 that was previously included in the International Building Code, the new test method comes with a great deal of “disclaimers”, including the warning that a […]
Why We Offer a “Recommended Tile Slip Test Package”
When our clients ask for an ANSI/NFSI A137.1 test we often recommend that they order a pendulum test as well. The pair of floor slip resistance tests is popular, and we offer a discounted price of $477.00 (for lab testing) when they are ordered together. The reason has to do with the A137.1 standard — […]
America Gets Another Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Slip Resistance Guideline
Wet, bare feet are soft and essentially treadless, and on a slippery hard floor can be treacherous — leading to falls that sometimes cause permanent brain damage or worse. It’s crucial to provide slip-resistant surfaces at swimming pools where people (some of them sober) will be walking, playing or running (even against the rules) with […]
Pendulum: The Most Widely Used Slip Resistance Test Worldwide
The pendulum skid tester, known in the U.S. as the “British pendulum” although it was invented at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, is the most widely used floor slip resistance tester worldwide for measuring the slip resistance of pedestrian surfaces (DCOF rating). It is a national floor slip test standard in at least 50 […]
Slip Resistance of Basketball and Volleyball Floors
Floors for indoor sports (basketball, volleyball, gym, etc.) need careful attention to their dry slip resistance. Players must have enough traction to start and stop quickly, yet not so much that they can’t pivot rapidly. Fortunately, there are well-defined and long-accepted standards for the slip resistance of these floors, using the pendulum skid testing instrument […]
Water Parks: Inputs Wanted for Splash Pad Slip Resistance Standard
“Splash pads” are areas that contain water-play features and may contain play structures, but do not permit water to accumulate to any real depth. Their aliases include aquatic play pad, spray zone, spray pool, spray pad, spray deck, rain deck, and splash deck. There are 5,000–10,000 commercial or public splash pads in the USA, and […]