[Frictional properties of human skin at different ages, gender and anatomical regions].

A reciprocal sliding skin friction testing apparatus was performed to investigate human skin frictional properties of different physiological factors such as different ages, gender and anatomical regions. Student's t-test for non-paired data and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used in data analysis. Fisher LSD was used for multiple comparison on the statistical significance of the coefficients. The results showed that the skin frictional properties at the different anatomical regions were strongly dependent on the age. The differences of friction coefficients at the different anatomical regions became negligible with the increase of age. The skin frictional properties of different gender at the same anatomical region and age exhibited no significant differences. The friction coefficients of different ages at the same anatomical regions showed significant differences.