Corrugated packages are widely used for the distribution and storage of consumer goods. These containers experience high compressive forces in stacking, and the boxes fail due to buckling and creasing in the panels. Crease lines increase the consumer product rejections as the product is thought to be damaged with the package. With increased online shopping, these problems result in higher monetary losses for the companies and increased material waste. Lattice modeling, a method to represent continuums using beams or springs, provides new opportunities to describe post-buckling creases via beam joint stiffness reduction. This may be accomplished by inducing moment releases at the lattice joints upon failure. Lattice modeling has been used to model orthotropic material properties, but not to model nonlinear orthotropic behavior or creasing. The goal is to develop a modeling method to predict the creasing failure modes and the applied force magnitudes at the onset of creasing damage for corrugated paper packages with nonlinear orthotropic properties. This manuscript modifies the analytical beam-lattice models from literature to describe nonlinear (bi-linear) orthotropic paper, and analyze corrugated board lattices via classical lamination theory. The research employs an adjusted transformed cross-section method to represent the liners and homogenized fluting. To model failure, the computational framework replaces the original rotational constraints between beams with rigid connector elements, and reduces the lattice joint rotational stiffness to zero based on a pre-defined critical connector moment or critical stress criteria. The critical stress for failure is obtained by capturing crease line formation during non-standard edge compression tests (ECTs) in the container’s loading direction. The model is then validated via box compression tests (BCTs) of regular slotted containers (RSCs). The lattice model predicts the crease lines origin and progression as well as an accurate peak BCT load. The proposed framework may be used to alter corrugated box design to reduce failures and hence the consumer rejections. This will help lower the related financial losses and address sustainability concerns.
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