Friction and Wear Properties of Commercial Solid Wood Floorings

The friction and wear properties of nine kinds of typical solid wood floorings were investigated using the tribometer of UMT-2MT. The coefficients of friction (COFs) between rubber shoe sole and floor were much higher than that between stainless steel ball and floor. For the nine different solid wood floorings, the COFs between stainless steel ball and lacquer for floor varied significantly from 0.1 to 0.6, while the COFs between stainless steel and solid wood of floors were nearly a constant around 0.55. The wear of floors was un-detectable when rubber shoe sole was experimented with floor for one hour. As stainless steel ball rubbed on the floorings, the anti-wear properties of lacquer for floors were better than that of solid wood. And a critical loading for each floorings was set up. As loads were lower than the critical one, the wear of floors was negligible, while higher than the critical load, the wear was much higher and increased quickly with increasing load. The experiments raise a possibility to evaluate the anti-wear properties of lacquer for floor and how to protect the floors from early wear by using right shoes.