Experimental Analysis of Slip Potential in Normal-Style Walking and Nanba-Style Walking

Abstract

The maximum peak value of traction coefficient between a shoe sole and a floor at heel-strike period |Fh/Fn|h and that at toe-off period |Fh/Fn|t for normal-style and Nanba-style walking were investigated in this paper. The Nanba-style walking is known as Japanese traditional walking style. The characteristics of the Nanba-style walking different from the normal-style walking are knee flexion, anteversion of the upper body and small swing of the arms. Gait experiments were carried out on a dry level walkway. Four healthy male adults participated in the gait experiments, and they were asked to walk in the normal-style and the Nanba-style walking under a wide range of step length and walking speed. Ground reaction forces and full body kinematics were captured. The results indicated that |Fh/Fn|h of the Nanba-style walking was significantly (p<0.05) smaller than that of the normal-style walking under a wide range of walking conditions. Kinematic analysis of the Nanba-style walking indicated that reduction in friction requirement for such walking style would be due to anteriorly displacing the whole body COM as compared with that of the normal-style walking, resulting in decrease of the distance between the whole body COM and the COP in horizontal-plane. While a statistically significant difference of |Fh/Fn|t between these two walking styles were not observed, mean |Fh/Fn|t of the Nanba-style walking was smaller than that of the normal-style walking under a wide range of walking conditions.