Available friction of ladder shoes and slip potential for climbing on a straight ladder

Abstract

Straight ladder accidents are a major safety problem. As a leading cause of injuries involving straight ladders, slips at the ladder base occur when the required friction exceeds the available friction at the ladder shoe and floor interface. The objectives of this experiment were to measure the available friction at the base of a portable straight ladder in contact with a floor and to estimate the slip potential of the ladder. The results of friction measurements indicated that the measured friction coefficient on the oily surfaces differed among the six commercially available ladder shoes evaluated. A statistical model was used to compare the available friction results from the current study with the friction requirements under different climbing conditions from a previous study based on their stochastic distributions to estimate the slip potential at the base of the ladder. The results showed that different climbing conditions used in the previous study could be supported by available friction on dry surfaces. However, when the ladder was put onto oily surfaces, resulting in a significant reduction in the available friction due to contamination, slip potential was significantly increased.

Keywords:

• Available friction coefficient
• Required friction coefficient
• Slip potential
• Straight ladder

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank William Aguilera, Christopher Brunette, Stephen Coppola, Mary Dionne, Richard Holihan, Eric Jones, Niall O'Brien, Margaret Rothwell, Danyel Tarinelli and Peter Teare for their technical assistance.