Everyday parking floors are exposed to mechanical stress. Deck coatings in multi-storey car parks and basement garages are among the most heavily stressed of such systems. Therefore, car park surfaces demand robust and highly resistant coatings. In this article you will learn about our Parking Abrasion Test which we have developed to measure wear resistance of floor coatings in parking garages.
Standard Tests are not Enough
Standard tests such as the Taber Abrasion or the BCA method do not adequately simulate the effects of wear and tear as it happens on actual car park decks, as they do not really reproduce the stress scenario.
Starting, driving, braking and power steering, all subject the deck coating system, the bond between the built-up layers and the bond between the coating system and the substrate to high shear strain and intense compression forces. These diverse stresses make it necessary for trafficked surface protection systems – particularly elastic, crack-bridging coatings – to undergo more realistic testing.
How does Sika Test Wear Resistance of Floor Coatings?
Sika has developed a test method for parking floors which now best simulates this stress on coating systems under realistic conditions. In a research project with Kaiserslautern Technical University, this test procedure has been further developed into the new Parking Abrasion Test (PAT).
The test equipment consists of a compressed air operated machine (pressure ca. 5 bar) which moves a car wheel mechanically on the coating system under test, and turns it on its axis. The tyre is loaded at a weight of 400 kg and is turned at a maximum angle of deflection of 100 °.
The tests are run so that the temperature on the coating surface does not rise above 65 °C. In this method we can realistically represent the actual wear that will occur on the coating system. Every one of Sika’s trafficked surface protection systems undergoes this test procedure before release.
Watch a Video to See Parking Abrasion Test in Action
Author
Conrad Nabholz
Market Development Manager
Target Market Flooring
Sika Services AG