Slip risk assessment of commonly employed athletic footwear tread patterns in the indoor sports activity of badminton

Abstract

Walking, jogging, or leaping can be done with exceptional plantar comfort thanks to modern athletic footwear. On the other hand, a perceptual illusion is produced when harmful plantar loads cause minimal felt plantar discomfort. This leads to insufficient impact-moderating behavior and subsequent injury. Sports footwear goods are in high demand due to the notable increase in physical activity. The footwear business has had to increase product variety, shorten timeframes for product development, and offer customized goods in order to stay competitive. To measure the functionalities of athletic footwear, evaluations are essential in product development, developing prototypes, biomechanics, and other domains. These include the mitigation of impact forces during motion, traction, and motion control. In this work, the level of optimum athletic performance was determined for certain Indian-based footwear brands. Five athletic footwears from some of the leading Indian footwear manufacturers were selected for slip risk assessment studies in an athletic activity flooring. Shore A hardness was measured with the help of a durometer for all the athletic footwear selected for the study. The heel tread contact area of all the athletic shoes was also determined prior to the questionnaire survey and athletic evaluation by the participants. The evaluation was performed on the flooring of a badminton court. The participants were asked to wear the five selected athletic footwears and then perform their practice session accordingly. Their responses were recorded which included the attributes from footwear comfort, slipping probability and ease of athletic effectiveness. On the basis of these feedback, the most optimum footwear outsole tread pattern was shortlisted.