Session: DAC-11-01-Design of Engineering Materials and Structures

Paper Number: 87728

87728 - Automated Design of Packaging Cushions for Withstanding Drop Tests 

A method is described to automate the design of foam packaging cushions to ensure that a packaged product does not fail when subjected to dropping. Cushion definition is a straightforward procedure performed by packaging engineers but there is no precedence for its automatic generation in the current literature. This methodology presented here includes computer aided design instructions to automatically create packaging shapes and an iterative search for optimal cushion thickness using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations. The FEA is correlated to real drop test data and the foam material is modeled in its interaction with the enclosed product. An implementation is completed as an add-in to Siemens NX CAD. The resulting research includes efforts to ensure that the resulting cushion does not interfere with the product's removal and that a factor of safety is ensured for the final product. Virtual drop tests are compared and correlated to physical experimentation at a industrial facility.  While the entire process takes over two hours, the result can save engineers significant time to find packaging solutions and can produce solutions that are smaller than conventionally over-designed packaging solutions. The paper presents the detailed steps of the methodology and shows results for two example products.

Presenting Author: David So Oregon State University

Presenting Author Biography: David So is a graduate research assistant at OSU.

Authors:

David So Oregon State University
Lisa Hildebrand Oregon State University
Matthew Campbell Oregon State University