SYMPOSIA PAPER Published: 01 January 2000
STP14436S

Testing the Cut and Puncture Resistance of Firefighter Safety Shoes

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ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard 13997 “Protective Clothing — Mechanical Properties — Determination of Resistance to Cutting by Sharp Objects” 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 “Standard Test Method for Protective Clothing Material. Resistance to Puncture”, 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.

Author Information

Lara, J
IRSST (Institut de recherche en santé et en sécurité du travail), Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Massé, S
IRSST (Institut de recherche en santé et en sécurité du travail), Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Daigle, R
IRSST (Institut de recherche en santé et en sécurité du travail), Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Turcot, D
IRSST (Institut de recherche en santé et en sécurité du travail), Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Details
Developed by Committee: F23
Pages: 74–84
DOI: 10.1520/STP14436S
ISBN-EB: 978-0-8031-5434-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8031-2869-9