Influence of Analog and Digital Crease Lines on Mechanical Parameters of Corrugated Board and Packaging

Abstract

When producing packaging from corrugated board, material weakening often occurs both during the die-cutting process and during printing. While the analog lamination and/or printing processes that degrade material can be easily replaced with a digital approach, the die-cutting process remains overwhelmingly analog. Recently, new innovative technologies have emerged that have begun to replace or at least supplement old techniques. This paper presents the results of laboratory tests on corrugated board and packaging made using both analog and digital technologies. Cardboard samples with digital and analog creases are subject to various mechanical tests, which allows for an assessment of the impact of creases on the mechanical properties of the cardboard itself, as well as on the behavior of the packaging. It is proven that digital technology is not only more repeatable, but also weakens the structure of corrugated board to a much lesser extent than analog. An updated numerical model of boxes in compression tests is also discussed. The effect of the crushing of the material in the vicinity of the crease lines in the packaging arising during the analog and digital finishing processes is taken into account. The obtained enhanced computer simulation results closely reflect the experimental observations, which prove that the correct numerical analysis of corrugated cardboard packaging should be performed with the model taking into account the crushing.

Estimation of the Edge Crush Resistance of Corrugated Board Using Artificial Intelligence

“…When designing the corrugated cardboard packaging, it is crucial that they meet a certain load-bearing capacity, which is directly related to the mechanical properties of the paperboard, bearing in mind that the paper is an anisotropic material whose properties depend on the fibers alignment. The ease of shaping, which is considered a great advantage of the cardboard, may reduce the load capacity of the packaging, e.g., by introducing the ventilation holes, perforations and indentations [ 3 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] or creases [ 11 , 12 ]. Another factors that can diminish the strength of the cardboard are storage time, humidity and temperature [ 13 , 14 ] or stacking load [ 5 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the In-Plane Compression of Corrugated Paperboard Panels

“…Since a nonlinear material model was not considered by [11], whose data for individual sheets were used, all the required test data were not available, and some assumptions had to be made to implement Hill's criterion. Hill's yield criterion is not the most appropriate as it does not account for paper's different strengths in tension and compression; however, other authors have used Hill's criterion [28,29]. More applicable yield criteria have been investigated [30], but would require even more assumptions to implement.…”

“…To investigate how the panel would respond to a lower yield criterion, the values in Table 9 were reduced by 30%. A 40% reduction in tensile yield values was used by [28] to model ECT behaviour based on values reported in the literature, but since this section is only a feasibility study, 30% was deemed acceptable. The overall response was similar to the original bi-linear curves, but the sample yielded at a smaller load-Figure 16 (bi-linear 70% curve).…”

Investigation of different cardboard materials under impact loads

“…Packaging systems are designed to protect products from mechanical, biological, chemical, and climatic hazards during the distribution and transportation process. Thus, the products can be shipped to consumers without damage while maintaining the product quality (Corner and Paine 2002;Luong et al 2021;Garbowski et al 2022). In addition to this basic protection function, packaging must provide the ability to individualize and successfully advertise the product (Singh et al 2017;Weber et al 2022).…”