Slips and falls are one of the leading causes of occupational accidents.
Understanding the important factors that affect shoe-floor friction is vital for identifying
unsafe surfaces and designing better footwear and flooring. While the shoe-floor
coefficient of friction is known to be dependent on several factors including shoe and
floor roughness, shoe speed, shoe material, and normal load, the mechanisms that cause
these effects are not very well understood. The objective of this thesis is to develop a
finite element model that simulates the microscopic asperity interaction between shoe and
floor surfaces and apply it to quantify the effect of shoe material, topography, loading and
sliding speed on shoe-floor adhesion and hysteresis friction