what is the thickness of the load spreaders?
During my training and career (Military), we always took into account the thickness of the load spreader and increased the footprint through an angle of 45degrees from the contact area of the load to give the effective footprint. Then divide the mass of the load by the new footprint area to give the loading. With 2 battens as per the illustration, the inner edges could not be extended by 45deg .
Load spreading means increasing the contact to reduce the floor loading. You cannot simply add any depth of material just to spread the load without taking into acount the spreading effect (otherwise 3mm ply would suffice??), if you dont take into account the depth of the material then it just becomes floor protection to reduce damage to the floor, but not spread the load.
The use of battens may be to prevent contact with a non-treadway area where the battens rest on the treadway areas (Bridging). In which case they are purely distributing the load to the treadway areas which will have a higher UD load strength limit.
drop me a pm and I'll email you with a diagram of what I'm on about as I cannot seem to get the image onto here
Last edited by WASALOADIE; 7th Mar 2014 at 14:58.