Children's Rubber Shoes Testing

Children's rubber shoes testing mainly conducts scientific testing and analysis on physical and mechanical property testing, safety performance testing, chemical hazardous substance limit testing, hygienic performance testing, appearance and marking conformity testing and specific functional performance testing, objectively assessing the product quality grade and issuing a detailed test report, providing a basis for manufacturers' quality control and downstream users' product acceptance.

Testing Items

Physical and mechanical property testing: This is the basis of quality evaluation of children's rubber shoes. The main items include the tensile strength, elongation at break and abrasion loss of the sole and foxing, to evaluate their ability to withstand stretching, bending and friction during wear. The tear strength and flexing resistance of the upper fabric also need to be strictly tested, ensuring the durability of the shoe structure during children's activities.

Safety performance testing: Focuses on potential risks that may cause harm to children. This includes the inspection of sharp edges and accessible sharp points, as well as the pull-off force tests of small parts (such as decorative buttons and eyelets), to prevent the risk of swallowing caused by part detachment. Whether there are metal foreign objects or broken needles in the shoe is also a required inspection item.

Chemical hazardous substance limit testing: Children's skin is delicate and more sensitive to harmful chemicals. In accordance with relevant mandatory standards, this item strictly screens extractable heavy metals (such as lead, cadmium and arsenic), banned azo dyes, formaldehyde content and phthalate plasticizers in shoe materials, ensuring that the product is non-toxic and harmless.

Hygienic performance testing: Evaluates the comfort and health indicators of children's rubber shoes during wear. This mainly includes the moisture absorption and moisture permeability of the shoe lining and insole, as well as the antibacterial and anti-mold performance of the materials. For products claiming special functions (such as deodorization and antibacterial), corresponding functional verification tests need to be carried out.

Appearance and marking conformity testing: Checks the overall appearance quality of children's rubber shoes, such as symmetry, color uniformity, cleanliness and obvious manufacturing defects. At the same time, it verifies whether the product marking is complete and accurate, including the product name, shoe size, implemented standard, safety category, manufacturer information and necessary safety warning instructions.

Specific functional performance testing: Special tests are carried out for children's rubber shoes with special uses. For example, anti-slip children's shoes need to test the friction coefficient of the sole on wet and slippery roads; waterproof children's shoes need to undergo hydrostatic pressure or water penetration tests; warm children's shoes need to test their thermal insulation rate, ensuring that the claimed functions are true and effective.

Testing Scope

Division by upper material: Testing covers various children's rubber shoes with textiles, synthetic leather and natural leather as the upper materials. Different materials need to focus on their specific performance indicators, such as the color fastness of textiles and the pH value and hexavalent chromium content of leather, ensuring that all materials comply with children's product safety requirements.

Division by wearing purpose: Including children's rain boots, beach shoes and sports leisure rubber shoes for daily wear, as well as anti-slip boots and warm boots with special functions. According to the claimed use, the testing scope needs to targetedly add or strengthen the test requirements of related items, such as sports rubber shoes focusing more on abrasion and flexing resistance.

Division by age group: Strictly distinguishes between infant (usually 36 months and below) and children (usually over 3 years old to 14 years old) products. Infant rubber shoes have more stringent requirements in terms of safety (such as small parts) and chemical safety, and the test standard limits are usually also stricter.

Division by product structure: The testing scope covers all-rubber shoes, rubber-plastic shoes and fabric-upper rubber shoes and other structures. Sampling and testing need to be carried out separately for each component of the shoe body (such as the outsole, foxing, upper, lining and bonding parts), evaluating the comprehensive performance of the whole and each component.

Division by market circulation link: Testing not only applies to the factory inspection and type inspection of production enterprises, but also covers the supervision and spot checks of market supervision departments, quality inspection for e-commerce platform entry and statutory inspection of import and export commodities, ensuring that the product complies with quality safety standards in all links.

Division by standard conformity: Testing needs to be carried out in accordance with national mandatory standards (such as GB 30585 "Safety technical specification for children's shoes"), recommended product standards (such as HG/T 2017 "Ordinary sports shoes"), and enterprise-declared standards or technical requirements, ensuring that the product meets all declared standard requirements.

Testing Methods

Physical property test methods: Tensile strength and elongation at break are usually determined in accordance with GB/T 528 "Rubber, vulcanized or thermoplastic — Determination of tensile stress-strain properties", using dumbbell-shaped specimens tested on a tensile testing machine. Abrasion resistance is often determined in accordance with GB/T 9867 "Rubber, vulcanized or thermoplastic — Determination of abrasion resistance" using a rotating cylindrical drum abrasion machine.

Chemical substance test methods: The extraction and determination methods of harmful chemicals depend on the specific item. For example, the content of extractable heavy metals is often analyzed precisely using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) or atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) in accordance with standards such as GB/T 30157.

Small parts safety test methods: In accordance with standards such as GB 30585, a specified small parts tester is used to check whether there are small parts that may be swallowed. For attached decorative parts, a force gauge is used to apply a specified force (such as 90 N) to check whether they detach or are pulled out within the specified time.

Functional performance verification methods: The anti-slip performance test is usually carried out on a standard inclined plane or flat plate using a friction coefficient tester, simulating both dry and wet states. The waterproof performance test may adopt a hydrostatic pressure testing machine or a dynamic waterproof tester to evaluate the ability of the material to resist water penetration.

Sensory and marking inspection methods: The appearance quality is usually judged by trained inspectors through visual inspection and hand feel under standard lighting conditions. The marking inspection is to check item by item whether the information on the physical product, packaging and hang tag is completely consistent with the requirements of the applicable standards, with no missing or wrong marking.

Aging resistance and yellowing resistance test methods: Evaluate the stability of the color and performance of children's rubber shoes during storage and use. A xenon arc aging test chamber is often used to simulate sunlight irradiation, or an ozone aging test chamber is used. After the test, the color change of the specimen (such as gray scale card rating) is observed and the physical properties are re-tested to evaluate the aging degree.

Testing Standards

Domestic Standards:

1. GB 30585, Safety technical specification for children's shoes

2. HG/T 2017, Ordinary sports shoes

3. GB/T 30157, Textiles — Determination of phthalates

4. GB 18401-2010, National general safety technical code for textile products

5. GB/T 3920-2024, Textiles — Tests for colour fastness — Colour fastness to rubbing

6. GB/T 3921-2008, Textiles — Tests for colour fastness — Colour fastness to washing with soap or soap and soda

International Standards:

1. ISO 105, Textiles — Tests for colour fastness

2. ISO 13934-1, Textiles — Tensile properties of fabrics — Part 1: Determination of maximum force and elongation at maximum force using the strip method

Note: The applicable standard can be selected according to the product use and customer trade requirements; standards agreed in the contract take precedence over general standards.

Testing Instruments and Equipment

Universal material testing machine: The core equipment for testing physical and mechanical properties. By configuring different fixtures, it can complete various mechanical tests such as tensile strength, tear strength, bonding strength and small part pull-off force. Its high-precision sensors and data acquisition system can accurately record the force value and deformation curve.

Abrasion testing machine: Mainly used to evaluate the abrasion resistance of the sole material. Common types include the rotating cylindrical drum type (such as the DIN abrasion machine) and the Taber abrasion machine. Under the specified load and abrasive, the equipment makes the specimen and the abrasion wheel rub against each other, and quantifies the abrasion resistance by measuring the abrasion volume or mass loss.

Chemical analysis instruments: Including atomic absorption spectrometers (AAS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (ICP-MS) for determining heavy metal content, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for analyzing organic volatiles and plasticizers, and ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometers for determining formaldehyde content.

Environmental and aging test equipment: Constant temperature and humidity test chambers are used to provide a standard test environment; yellowing resistance test chambers evaluate the color change of materials through irradiation with a specific light source; ozone aging chambers are used to evaluate the crack resistance of rubber materials under an ozone environment. These are all key equipment for evaluating product durability.

Special safety performance testing tools: Including small parts testers (used to simulate the size of a child's throat), sharp edge testers and sharp point testers. These devices are strictly designed according to safety standards and objectively determine whether the product has physical safety hazards through mechanical simulation.

Functional and comfort testing equipment: Such as friction coefficient testers for anti-slip performance evaluation; moisture permeability testers for evaluating the sweat vapor discharge ability of shoe materials; and thermal insulation performance testers (such as flat plate thermal insulation meters) for measuring the thermal insulation effect of warm children's shoes, ensuring the truthfulness of the product's functional claims.