Ensuring that flooring is fit for purpose is vital
Companies need to be able to test the durability of their floorcoverings, as premature wear can prove costly in terms of complaints, product recalls and reputational damage.
SATRA has developed a method for testing different flooring to help determine how it
will wear and how well it retains its appearance. This test involves the interaction between a moving shoe and the floorcovering, based on SATRA’s comprehensive gait research.
The SATRA STM 528 Pedatron provides an accelerated wear simulation under realistic conditions and can be used as an effective means of assessing the wear characteristics of flooring. It is applicable to many flooring surfaces and also hardware such as stair nosings.
The floorcovering is subjected to a cyclic walking action from a standard shoe, where
the specimen rotates incrementally while the forepart of the shoe is in contact with
the flooring. These individual footsteps are designed to replicate a mixture of walking
in a straight line and turning a corner. The floorcovering under test rotates such that it completes a full 360deg rotation every 150 footfalls. It is visually assessed and a subjective assessment of wear and appearance retention is made.
For stair nosings, the floorcovering remains stationary during the test, with the footfall positioned to ensure that the centre forepart of the shoe strikes the nosing edge, representing either walking down or up the stairs. It is visually checked for any
movement of the nosing insert and also to ensure if any damage or cracking of the nosing has occurred. As well as checking flooring for wear, SATRA can use the
STM 528 Pedatron to replicate wear on floorcoverings in order to assess slip resistance of worn products, and it can simulate wear in relatively short periods of time. As a result, it is able to provide an indication of the long-term effects of wear on the floor’s slip resistance.
This is undertaken in conjunction with the pendulum test EN 16165:2021 Annex C,
with a test performed on a specific area of flooring after various numbers of footfalls: normally every 250,000. STM 528 Pedatron use is valuable in assessing an existing product or a new floorcovering under development before it is released onto the market.
