- Author
- Lara, J. | Masse, S. | Daigle, R. | Turcot, D.
- Title
- Testing the Cut and Puncture Resistance of Firefighter Safety Shoes.
- Coporate
- IRSST, Quebec, Canada
- Report
- ASTM STP 1386,
- Book or Conf
- Performance of Protective Clothing: Issues and Priorities for the 21st Century. Proceedings. Seventh (7th) Volume. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). ASTM STP 1386. June 28-30, 1999, ASTM, West Conshohocken, PA, Seattle, WA, Nelson, C. N.; Henry, N. W., Editors, 74-84 p., 2000
- Keywords
- protective clothing | protective equipment | foot coverings | fire fighters | garments | test methods | boots | sampling | NFPA 1971 | ISO 13997
- Identifiers
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); Cust Test Method; cust resistance; puncture test method; puncture resistance; safety boots; results of tests performed with the ASTM puncture probe on neoprene; results of tests performed with the hemispheric puncture probe on the neoprene sheet; new mandrel; puncture and cut resistance ranking of the tested sections of the safety shoes
- Abstract
- ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard 13997 is intended to be used to evaluate the cut resistance of any kind of nonmetallic material used in protective devices, gloves, safety shoes, sleeves, etc. However, the mandrel used for performing a cut test that was developed to hold glove materials is not well adapted for holding the firefighter safety boot samples, which are in most cases thick (e.g., 10 mm thick) and nonuniform in thickness. Furthermore, with some safety shoe materials, a very high coefficient of friction develops when the blade slides and penetrates the material. A new mandrel was developed and a test procedure that differs from the ones in the ISO test method is proposed for evaluating the cut resistance of firefighter safety shoes. It consists of fixing the material firmly in a specially designed mandrel to prevent the material from sliding. The test is performed with two different loads instead of the three loads proposed in ISO 13997. For puncture resistance, preliminary tests were performed with two different probes: the one proposed in ASTM F 1342 , which consists of a 2-mm diameter rod with a conical extremity; the other puncture probe is a 1-mm diameter rod with a hemispheric extremity of 0.5 mm radius. It was demonstrated that the ASTM probe is difficult to produce and that the results obtained by testing it on a neoprene reference material give poor reproducibility. On the other hand, the hemispheric probe is easy to produce and the results are reproducible. The hemispheric point was chosen for the puncture tests. Cutting and puncture tests were performed on ten firefighter safety shoes most commonly used in the United States and in Canada. Results demonstrated that safety shoes having good cut resistance do not necessarily have good puncture resistance. Other information from this study could be useful for safety shoe manufacturers and users and for standardization on order to establish the minimal level of performance.