Biomechanical modeling of footwear-fluid-floor interaction during slips

Slips and falls are among the major concerns for public safety. Slipping risks can be reduced by ensuring adequate traction at the shoe-floor interface. The outsole design of footwear is a critical factor to maintain sufficient shoe-floor traction in the presence of slippery contaminants such as water or oil. While the role of floorings and contaminants on footwear traction has been studied widely, limited works have investigated the role of footwear outsole geometry and tread patterns on shoe-floor traction. In this work, eight footwear outsole designs and their traction performance were tested on a common flooring with water contamination, through the development of a novel fluid-structure interaction based computational framework. Induced fluid pressure, mass flow rates, and contact areas were quantified across the outsole patterns, and their effect on footwear friction was investigated. The study results were validated using mechanical slip testing experiments. The results indicated that the outsoles which had horizontal treads or untreaded heel regions can lead to drastic reduction of footwear friction. Also, contact area alone was quantified to be a poor choice in estimating the traction performance of footwear on water contaminated floorings. Such novel study results have not been reported to date, and are anticipated to provide important guidelines to footwear manufacturers to evaluate and optimize footwear tread parameters which would help in reducing the risk of slips.