Objective
Due to strong competition from Asian countries encountered recently, footwear and flooring Manufacturers hope to achieve a high quality product with new performance in order to stand-out from the vast range of products that are currently available on the market. Increasingly important factors with regard to both footwear (professional and for everyday use) and floorings are safety and comfort. Many injuries caused by slipping could be avoided if appropriate sole materials and tread were chosen. Instead, there continues to be many accidents in the work environment most of which, i.e. 44.2%, are caused by slipping, 41.4% by trips and 14.4% are sprains. Currently, sole manufacturers design their models to be anti-slip using basic design criteria, often relying on their intuition and previous experience. The problem resides in the lack of design tools that can be used in the conception of footwear, which would make prototyping much cheaper, quicker and more effective in creating an answer to the friction that the shoe would be subjected to when used. The availability of these tools would lead to a reduction in the design-production time of the footwear as well as a reduction in costs, as unnecessary costs could be avoided, such as those derived from amendments to sole moulds, materials used for the production of prototypes, slip resistance validation tests following prototyping. For this reason, the main objective of the project is to develop guidelines and specific software which could be used as a design tools for soles and floorings to optimise their performance in relation to slipping.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SME-2010-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinator
03600 Elda Alicante
Spain
See on map
Participants (9)
03203 Elche Alicante
See on map
26580 Arnedo Logrono
See on map
12200 Onda Castellon
See on map
70051 Barletta
See on map
4224 Goranja Vas
See on map
3310 Zalec
See on map
12006 Castellon
See on map
1000 Ljubljana
See on map
12549 Bechi
See on map