Like any company launching a new product, floor seals manufacturers have to balance the need to test exhaustively to ensure that the product is fit for purpose and steal a march on their competitors.
Commercialising a product early, on the basis of laboratory trials alone, might prove rash – but do manufacturers sacrifice early market exposure and wait for field verification of performance (which could take months or years) and risk losing commercial initiative?
There is a range of test methods which can determine individual physical characteristics of floor seals, but these offer little insight into their expected in-service performance, as they test for individual parameters in isolation from each other. This was shown in an earlier DTI/TRADA Technology project where products would often show good performance in a range of individual laboratory tests, but would achieve poor results when subjected to in-service trials.
TRADA’s recently completed three-year research project with the DTI has enabled us to develop a test method for the early prediction of wear-resistance of floor seals and lacquers. This offers manufacturers a quick and reliable way of predicting performance based on a fundamentally different test approach.
Currently, the floor seals industry bases performance predictions on a variety of “tribological” test methods – methods which interact with the surface to simulate abrasive or erosive wear. These usually involve subjecting the surface to an abrasive medium and measuring weight loss or alternatively gloss reduction.
Such approaches are heavily influenced by properties such as hardness which are assumed to provide protection, but in reality – and in the context of repeated stressing under recurring footfall – may not be as relevant as they first seem. There also appears to be a lack of consistency among the various test approaches in that some may return good results for the harder products, while other methods may have an in-built bias in favour of softer ones.
These inconsistencies were demonstrated in the project when six products differing in formulation type and with a proven track record of performance were subjected to field trials in order to verify their respective performance ranking. When subjected to a range of current test methods, the same products produced widely differing results with no consensus among them.
This project has developed a new technique where the floor seal is assessed by taking into account stresses built up within the lacquer under load, as well as its ability to release them when the load is relaxed. In this way the new method assesses the seal as if it were a structural component flexing under repeated footfall. By assessing the amount of relaxation, or more importantly the amount of energy absorbed by the coating under load, excellent correlation with field data has been achieved.
Since developing this approach 20 additional seal products have been assessed using the new test method, with excellent results reflecting field experience, according to the project consortium (see below).
The test is simple and can produce reliable data within a few weeks. It also has the ability to discriminate between those products which give moderately good performance soon after application, but which deteriorate rapidly with time; and those which are longer lived but which may require protection immediately after application.
The method was deemed to be commercially relevant to the lacquer and flooring industries in the sense that it provides scientific information on issues of appropriate end use which can be used commercially, both in the development of new product lines, or as a means of confirming anecdotal claims of performance.
The commercial partners showed unanimous support for the method, agreeing that it was attractive in terms of returning information within a short time frame, as well as being easily understood in terms of its concept. This would make it useful as a tool to corroborate manufacturers’ claims and could therefore be used as a marketing aid. In this sense it would be especially useful to architects and specifiers within local authorities: performance claims of products could be assessed impartially prior to commitment on large-scale projects where the risk of premature failure is associated with high remedial costs.
The project was supported by the UK Department of Trade & Industry and TRADA and carried out by TRADA Technology as the lead partner in a consortium which included Akzo Nobel Woodcare, BonaKemi, Granwax, ICI, Junckers, Premiere Products, and Ronseal Trade. For further information contact Peter Kaczmar on 01494 569600 or e-mail pkaczmar@trada.co.uk.
