Development of a Biomechanical Human Heel Surrogate for Barefoot Slip Testing

It was found in Indian apartments and residential flats, barefoot slips and falls are frequent. Because of a lack of information about how to avert such accidents, they are frequently ignored, leading to recurring and serious traumatic injuries. There is no realistic method available at the moment to evaluate the danger of barefoot slipping on bathroom floor tiles under actual contaminated situations like water and shampoo. To address this, a unique human heel substitute was fabricated in this study for barefoot slip risk assessment. Employing three-dimensional (3D) imaging and printing, this substitute was modified to accurately imitate the traction and biologically-based characteristics of the human heel. A mechanised slip testing system with a heel surrogate was used to evaluate eight different bathroom floors from apartment buildings under wet, soapy, shampoo, and shower gel spill circumstances. Two modelled heel surrogate samples were used to determine the barefoot traction performance for each floor condition and evaluate its repeatability. The created human heel surrogate demonstrated a remarkable repeatability (r2 > 0.80) across all contaminated situations. The ACOF was found to be minimal in the wet condition (less than 0.15), and significantly lower and generalizable in shampoo and shower gel contaminated circumstances (less than 0.10). Such barefoot slip testing findings have not yet been disclosed, but they are expected to provide basic guidelines in choosing appropriate bathroom floorings.