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Mission Critical

Glossary Term

Any operation that cannot tolerate intervention, compromise or shutdown while performing its critical function is considered a mission-critical environment. Mission critical environments usually support health, safety, security and human welfare. They also monitor, store, support and communicate data that cannot be lost or corrupted without compromising their core function.

Since all computer and communications systems are highly sensitive to static electricity, static events pose an internal threat to mission-critical operations, such as flight control towers, energy management operations, 911 centers, command centers, dispatch, control rooms, data storage centers, hospitals, stock exchanges, laboratories, university research facilities, computer rooms—any space where the loss or corruption of data cannot be tolerated.

ESD-protective flooring is a mandatory element in mission critical environments, because it inhibits charge generation and dissipates static to ground before it becomes a problem.

Learn more about choosing ESD flooring for mission-critical spaces

Walking Body Voltage

The static charge, in volts, generated by a person walking across the floor. Static charges that accumulate on the body discharge to the first object the person touches, potentially damaging or disrupting sensitive electronics. Learn about how ESD flooring works

Voltage Suppression

Voltage suppression occurs when an ESD-protective material, such as a static-dissipative table covering, suppresses static charges rather than dissipating charges to ground. For instance, an ESD laminate with a buried conductive layer will suppress the electrostatic field from a charged object, but is incapable of discharging static even when the charged object touches its surface.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Gases emitted from certain solids or liquids, including a variety of chemicals, which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations are consistently higher indoors than outdoors: often up to ten times higher. Flooring should always be tested for VOC content by independent certification organizations like FloorScore and GreenGuard.

Triboelectric Series

A list of common materials, such as leather, nylon, wool, and paper, showing whether a material tends to give up or take on electrons when in frictional contact with other materials on the list. Those that give up electrons become positively charged, and materials that accept electrons become negatively charged. In the ESD industry, the

Triboelectric Charging

Whenever two objects with different electrical characteristics make contact and separate, the molecules in the two materials interact, forming an electrical bond. Separating the materials creates friction. This frictional force draws electrons away from one material and deposits an excess of electrons on the other, leaving a positive or negative electrical charge on both materials.

Total Cost of Ownership

The real cost of a product, encompassing the cost of the material, along with installation, maintenance, anticipated repairs and necessary monitoring. These hidden costs are often overlooked or ignored in the initial cost analysis, but they add up and over time can outpace the expense of owning a floor with a higher material cost. For

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