Material Support for Paper Products

[sean.ferguson]

Does Inventor or is various FEA packages have material support for paper products, like corrugated cardboard?  My company is looking for a FEA analysis option for specialized corrugated cardboard  containers.

[John_Holtz]

Hi Sean,

We do not have any specific to corrugated cardboard, but I wonder if the composite element capability of Nastran InCAD would be suitable? (In a composite, you model the surface using shell elements and define different layers of the "sandwich", with each layer having its own orthotropic material properties and orientation.)

Do you have any ideas what is important in the modeling the physical behavior of the boxes? Other than dropping them occasionally, I have no engineering experience with cardboard.

[sean.ferguson]

Thank you for the reply John.  The "sandwich" method sounds like it may be able to provide insight into what we are looking for. 

The product we produce is a very specialized corrugated container that is meant to hold liquids, up to 330 gallons.  The construction is a buildup of anywhere from 6 to 9 layers of corrugated liner, resulting in a "box" that has walls about 1.25" to 2" thick.  Currently, we have the ability to test the compression strength of our products, using specialized equipment.  However, we do not have a reliable method of determining the maximum of fluid pressure the walls can withstand.  FEA studies have been done, albeit about 20-30 years ago, on our product, but we are looking to move from hand calculations into a 3D models.

[John_Holtz · Accepted solution]

Wow. That is a lot of beer

300 gallons equates to a box of about 41 inches on a side, so I assume your boxes are roughly that size. A wall thickness of 1.25 to 2 inches is quite thick compared to the overall dimensions. I would be concerned that a shell element may not give accurate results, especially through the thickness and at the corners where "3d" effects may be critical.

You may want to talk with your reseller and some of our sales engineers who can dig into some of the details with you.

[sean.ferguson]

Thank you for your help.