This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

Packaging solutions are needed for protecting, distributing, and marketing products. While primary packaging usually encases the product itself, secondary packaging gathers multiple products with their primary packages for distribution. A common choice for secondary packaging is to use corrugated fiberboard because of its advantageous features: cost-effectiveness, high stiffness-to-weight ratio, durability, and eco-friendliness. Even if corrugated fiberboard has been widely used in secondary packaging for decades, a recent development in the field of modeling and simulation has enabled efficient performance-driven design of new packaging solutions. Due to large production volumes, light weighting in packaging by only a few percentages can significantly reduce material usage and CO2 emissions and unlock savings throughout the entire value chain. In this work, we show democratized workflows for performing a box compression test with an empty box made out of corrugated fiberboard. We present easy to adopt and use solutions for both corrugated fiberboard material calibration and virtual box compression test simulation. The corrugated fiberboard is modelled using an orthotropic elastic and anisotropic plastic homogenized composite layup structure. Due to homogenization, we can build existing models very efficiently from both CAD and computational complexity perspectives based on mid-surfaces instead of detailed corrugated fiberboard models. So far, the results from the virtual validation tool built upon finite elements have been promising and well in line with results from a commonly used analytical formula. This increases our confidence to look forward with our implementations and also to study other scenarios, like top load and drop test scenarios. Our solution is compatible with existing design exploration and optimization workflows. The value of democratized workflows lies in the fact that people who have no domain expertise in all highly technical fields that are required in packaging simulation process and method development can conduct complex processes and benefit from them. These fields include paper mechanics/engineering, CAD modeling, material modeling, simulation, data analysis, etc. Naturally, the necessary inputs and outputs are reduced to what the end user typically is familiar with. Hence, in the best case, a successfully designed democratized workflow enables companies to adopt highly sophisticated technology to take full advantage of simulation, perform virtual validation, and optimize packaging solutions, for example. Ultimately, democratized solutions are vital in accelerating routine work of everyone regardless of the level of expertise.