Tribo-electric Charging

Understanding Charge Generation: Walking Body Voltage

The generation of static electricity from contact and separation is a well documented phenomenon: any time two materials interact and then separate, there is an exchange of electrons between the two materials. In the case of people and floors, shoe soles interact with the floor’s surface, generating an electrical charge that accumulates on the person’s body. This is called walking body voltage.

The minute the person touches something—a door knob, for example—the voltage that has accumulated on his body immediately discharges from him to whatever he touched. If the object happens to be an electronic component—a telephone console, for instance—the electrical signal from the static discharge interferes with the component’s internal circuitry, causing a major crash like one featured in our case study on the LaVergne dispatchers and the military air traffic controllers.