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Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Packaging is designed to protect products from shock and vibration during transport. In recent years, paper cushioning materials, such as corrugated board and pulp molded packaging, are being increasingly used because they are environmentally friendly and easy to recycle. However, because no efficient packaging-design method yet exists for paper cushioning material, packaging engineers must rely on previous experience and the so-called trial-and-error method to design packaging. One reason for this situation is that, for most cases, the paper cushioning material used for protective packaging has a complicated structure and deforms after being subjected to repetitive shock and vibration. To address this shortcoming, we propose a damping design method for corrugated-board packaging that includes shock-absorbing and vibration damping elements. To verify that the resultant packaging functions as intended, we test three types of packaging in the following way: First, we use an existing design method to create cushioned packages and examine them via free-fall drop tests. Next, to test the robustness of packaging against vibration (i.e., for packaging destined for various modes of transport), we study the three packaging types by subjecting them to (i) vibration-only tests and (ii) drop-plus-vibration tests. For vibration-only tests, the packaging with highest static stress gives the best result, its “vibration fatigue” accounts for approximately 52% of the worst result given by packaging with the lowest static stress. In the drop-plus-vibration tests, the best packaging is that with the lowest static stress; its “vibration fatigue” is approximately 31% of the worst packaging, which has an intermediate value of static stress. This approach allows us to determine the packaging with the best shock-absorbing and vibration damping characteristics.

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