Cushioning Efficiency Evaluation by using the New Determination of Cushioning Curve in Cushioning Packaging Material Design for Agricultural Products

농산물 포장용 지류완충재의 새로운 완충곡선 구현을 통한 완충성능 평가

From the time the product is manufactured until it is carried and ultimately used, the product is subjected to some form of handling and transportations. During this process, the product can be subjected to many potential hazards. One of them is the damage caused by shocks. In order to design a product-package system to protect the product, the peak acceleration or G force to the product that causes damage needs to be determined. When a corrugated fiberboard box loaded with products is dropped onto the ground, part of the energy acquired due to the action of the gravitational acceleration during the free fall is dissipated in the product and the package in various ways. The shock absorbing characteristics of the packaging cushion materials are presented as a family of cushion curves in which curves showing peak accelerations during impacts for a range of static loads are shown for several drop heights. The new method for determining the shock absorbing characteristics of cushioning materials for protective packaging has been described and demonstrated. It has been shown that cushion curves can be produced by combining the static compression and impact characteristics of the material. The dynamic factor was determined by the iterative least mean squares (ILMS) optimization technique in which the discrepancies between peak acceleration data predicted from the theoretical model and obtained from the impact tests are minimized. The approach enabled an efficient determination of cushion curves from a small number of experimental impact data.

본 실험에서는 청과물의 포장 완충재로 사용되고 있는 골판지의 압축 및 충격특성을 이용하여 완충곡선(peak acceleration - static stress curve)을 구현하기 위한 알고리즘을 제시하였다. 본 연구에서 알 수 있듯이 한 개의 동적계수로도 완충곡선을 구현할 수 있음을 알 수가 있었으며, 기존의 완충곡선의 구현시 정적응력 범위 내에서의 실험횟수를 현저하게 줄일 수 있음을 알 수가 있었다. 또한, 골판지 완충재료 외에 플라스틱 발포체 완충재료에도 적용이 가능할 것으로 판단되었다.