Abstract
Ten young females were participated in this study to investigate the effects of types of shoes (sneakers, high heels, kill heels), types of tasks (standing, walking floor, step up and down), and areas of foot (fore foot, middle foot, rear foot) on foot pressures as well as subjective discomfort ratings. Results showed that kill heels had the most discomfort shoes, followed by high heels and sneakers. Generally, as the heel was higher, the discomfort of foot increased. For the analyses of task types, generally discomfort ratings were highest for the step down and up, followed by walking floor and standing. Especially discomfort ratings of high heels and kill heels were more evident in case of step up and step down than standing and walking floor. Standing task was rated as the lowest levels of discomfort on users' foot. Peak and mean foot pressures were also evaluated in this study. The findings represented that there was no significant differences between types of shoes in both peak and mean foot pressures. The peak pressure (82.14kPa) and mean pressure (40.32kPa) for standing task were significantly lower than those of other tasks [walking floor (190.55kPa, 55.46kPa), step up (191.43kPa, 53.80kPa), and step down (200.66kPa, 52.62kPa)]. Generally discomfort ratings and peak/mean pressures associated with foot showed that fore foot had higher discomfort ratings as well as peak and mean pressures than middle and rear foots. In particularly, this trend was more obvious in case of high heels and kill heels. For the high heels and kill heels, the peak pressures of fore foot were 4.5~4.8 times and 2.3~2.5 times greater than that of middle foot and rear foot, respectively, whereas the peak pressures of fore foot were 2.9 times and 1.7 times greater than that of middle and rear foots, respectively, in case of sneakers.
