A practical testing procedure for durability studies of resilient floor coverings

A new method to study the wear of floor coverings is presented. Surfaces were worn in a drum based on a new standard proposal. A test device called a “hexapod” walks along the floor coverings, which are placed on the wall of the drum containing sand. This walking mimics the real situation better than the current European standard EN 660-2 abrasive wear test for floor coverings. The proposed method was applied to testing the durability of 15 commercial floor coverings. The results were compared with the standard abrasive test EN 660-2. No correlation between the two methods was obtained, showing convincingly that the two tests represent different kinds of wearing mechanisms. Profilometry measurements were performed to obtain information about wearing. Mean waviness did not correlate with wearing.