Enhancing the Epoxy Flooring Materials to Avoid Dangerous of Electrostatic Charge and Slip Accidents

Authors

  • Rami Alfattani, Mohamed K. Hassan, Samy A. M., Ameer A. K.

Abstract

The annual Hajj sees about two million pilgrims moving around a small area of land, making several visits to the Grand Mosque at Mecca and to nearby Mina and go several time to jamarat bridge. The slip and fall accidents is the common phenomena on jamarat bridge. Therefore it was necessary to improve the flooring materials for height friction coefficient and reduce the dangerous of electrostatic charge.

The present work aims to improve the frictional and electrostatic properties of epoxy as flooring materials for different applications. I can be proposed the iron powder to use as filling material for epoxy flooring in order to increase friction coefficient and decrease the electrostatic charge generated from friction of shoes with flooring.  Flooring Test specimens in a form of a layer of 150 × 150 mm2 adhered into a wooden block. The tested materials were epoxy filled by different contents of iron powder 1, 2, and 3 %. The Friction and electrostatic charge can be measure at different values of normal loads. Use rubber shoes for carrying the experimental, the rubber shoes with hardness 67 shore”A” hardness.

Test results showed that the iron powder show the significant effect for increasing the safety of epoxy flooring materials, where the iron powder increase friction coefficient between shoes and flooring materials as well as decreasing the static charge between contact surfaces. Friction coefficient decrease with increasing normal load for rubber shoes with hardness 65 shore” A”  in dry conditions. For rubber shoes with hardness 67 shore ” A” friction increase with increasing normal load, this behavior related to increase the deformation of rubber shoes. In order of reducing the hazard of static charge, can be adding the iron powder by content of 2 % to the epoxy flooring materials.

Published

2020-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles