Epoxy Coating Slip Resistance Testing: 12 Products, One Manufacturer, 5 Failures

By Walkway Management South Florida

Twelve coating systems. One manufacturer, one lab, one day, the same ANSI A326.3 dynamic-coefficient-of-friction protocol and the same ASTM E303 pendulum run down every sample. That’s what a recent epoxy floor coating slip resistance testing submission looked like when a national flooring-coatings manufacturer sent us a full product line — two-component epoxy, polyurethane, and polyaspartic coatings, some smooth, some broadcast with quartz aggregate — to qualify before any of it goes on a real floor. The wet DCOF results ranged from 0.25, a number that fails every product-use category ANSI A326.3 defines, to 0.57, which clears every one of them, including the toughest. Same manufacturer, same submission, same test day. Wildly different floors.

A Full Product Line, One Slip Resistance Testing Round

The batch covered a smooth self-leveling epoxy resin, submitted at three separate application thicknesses; two aliphatic polyurethane topcoats, one later resubmitted with a filler added; an epoxy-novolac coating broadcast with quartz aggregate; a clear epoxy over a coarse quartz broadcast; a two-component polyaspartic system with decorative flakes; and three polyurethane-over-quartz finishes at different aggregate grit sizes. Twelve samples in all. Each ran the same protocol: three specimens per product on the BOT-3000E under ANSI A326.3’s 0.05% SLS wet condition, and matching British Pendulum Tester runs under ASTM E303-22 with both a hard, shod-simulating slider and a soft, barefoot slider, wet and dry. One technician, one calibrated instrument set, all twelve products tested the same day at our lab in the Deerfield Beach area.

Where the Epoxy Floor Coating Slip Resistance Testing Numbers Landed

Five of the twelve failed to clear 0.42 wet DCOF, the floor ANSI A326.3 sets for its lowest product-use category, Interior Dry, let alone Interior Wet. The smooth self-leveling epoxy, at its standard finish, read 0.27. The two polyurethane topcoats read 0.25 and 0.30. A polyaspartic flake system read 0.30. And the self-leveling epoxy, resubmitted at a much heavier 12-15 mil application, still only reached 0.39 on one submission, short of the line. A second 12-15 mil submission of the identical product, tested the same day, read 0.42: a technical pass, with zero margin. Same coating, same thickness, two submissions on opposite sides of the threshold, which is exactly the kind of borderline result a single spec-sheet number would never reveal.

The pendulum told the failing side of the story with more texture. On the thin self-leveling epoxy, wet PTV with the barefoot slider came back at 8, deep in the high-slip-potential range on a 0-150 scale and nowhere near the 36 PTV line AFSA’s pendulum standard sets for low slip potential wet. Dry, the same surface read PTV in the high 80s and 90s under both sliders. A coating can look and feel completely secure in a showroom and still be dangerous the moment it gets wet.

The other seven told a better story. Add a filler to one of the failing polyurethane topcoats and its wet DCOF jumped to 0.54, clearing Interior Dry, Interior Wet, and Interior Wet Plus outright. The clear epoxy broadcast with coarse quartz reached 0.53, enough to qualify for Interior Wet Plus. The strongest performer in the batch, a polyurethane system over a quartz broadcast, posted 0.57, clearing all five ANSI A326.3 product-use categories, including Oils/Greases at 0.55, the highest bar the standard sets.

Same Coating, Different Verdict for Bare Feet

That second self-leveling submission, the one that barely passed at 0.42, made a separate point on the pendulum. Tested with the hard, shod-simulating slider, its wet reading was 50 PTV: comfortably low risk. Tested with the soft, barefoot slider on the identical wet surface, it came back at 23 PTV: high risk. The same coating, the same wet condition, read as acceptable for someone in shoes and dangerous for bare feet.

That split is exactly why we run both instruments rather than one. Pendulum testing is the gold standard for assessing slip resistance because its slider strikes the wet surface at a speed that replicates an actual human heel strike, and running it with both a hard and a soft slider captures how a floor performs for different footwear conditions on the same wet surface. The BOT-3000E is a different, complementary tool, well suited to monitoring how a surface changes over time or, as in this batch, comparing a dozen products against each other under tightly controlled, repeatable conditions. Running both on all twelve samples is what surfaced the shod-versus-barefoot gap the DCOF number alone couldn’t show.

Why Epoxy Floor Coating Slip Resistance Testing Matters Before Installation

ANSI A326.3 doesn’t leave manufacturers guessing on this point. The standard requires products aiming for its higher-use categories, Interior Wet Plus, Exterior Wet, Oils/Greases, to be manufacturer-declared based on the same DCOF criteria the standard sets out (Section 3.4), and it says plainly that a measured DCOF value should not be the only factor in choosing a floor covering for a given application. Twelve products from one manufacturer, tested the same day by the same method, is exactly the kind of dataset that declaration is supposed to rest on. Not a single sample tested once, and not a technical data sheet.

That matters because a data sheet describes the chemistry, not the finished, installed surface. Two coatings can share a resin base and still land 0.30 DCOF apart depending on whether a filler or a quartz broadcast went into the mix. As this batch showed, even the identical product at the identical thickness can land on opposite sides of a threshold from one submission to the next. A property owner, architect, or facility manager choosing between products in the same line can’t tell which is which from a spec sheet alone. Only a documented ANSI A326.3 and pendulum test, run on the actual finish at the actual application thickness, answers that question.

Request a slip test or a quote from Walkway Management South Florida at trustwalkway.com, and find out where your coating actually lands before it’s on a floor people are walking across wet.