Footwear Wear and Wear Mechanisms

This chapter provides insight into the various wear mechanism’s involved during footwear and flooring interaction. The effect of footwear wear in accelerating the probability of fall accidents was firstly discussed. The actual microscopic nature of the flooring surfaces and the footwear surfaces were also discussed. The mechanism of interaction of the footwear asperities and the irregularities of the flooring surfaces were also highlighted. The underlying theory supporting the interaction between the microscopic features of both the footwear surface and flooring surface and how this interaction results in footwear wear were briefly discussed. The two components of friction, namely, adhesion and hysteresis friction and its role in the progression of footwear wear on the microscopic level were also briefly discussed. The last part of this chapter deals with the methods of characterizing footwear wear. Two-dimensional characterization methods comprising various surface roughness parameters to measure wear were discussed. The variation of these roughness parameters with respect to different wear processes including fatigue and abrasive wear was also highlighted. The last section deals with the three-dimensional characterization methods to ascertain footwear wear, which included scanning electron microscopy. The importance of this characterization technique was highlighted.