ABSTRACT
A variety of techniques are currently available for measuring slip resistance of shoes and floors (Bring, 1964; Brungraber, 1976; James, 1980; Strandberg, 1983b). About 70 types of slip resistance measurement devices were found in the literature by Strandberg (1983b), but Strandberg and Lanshammar (1981) found surprisingly little support in their biomechanical skidding data for the most common measurement principles. Since some of the techniques represent several operational modes of testing slip resistance, the number of different test methods is in fact considerably greater. Strandberg (1983b) pointed out that neither the measurement methods themselves nor their outputs should be accepted without examination of their inherent slip resistance definition based on tribology and biomechanics. After his review a number of new test devices have been presented in the literature (Grönqvist, 1995), but few devices seem to meet even the minimum criteria for validity, consistency, repeatability and precision.
