Behaviour of Multi‐layered Corrugated Paperboard Cushioning Systems under Impact Loads

During the distribution phase, products are often\udexposed to a variety of environmental hazards which,\udif excessively severe, may cause damage to and even\uddestroy the product. Among those, mechanical shocks\udare potentially the most damaging and effective\udcushion design requires that the maximum expected\udshock level be defined. This is usually determined by\udestimating the statistical likelihood of a certain design\uddrop height from data describing the probability of\udoccurrence. In the most cases, such statistical distributions\udare constructed using limited sets of data and,\udas such, cannot represent all possible drop heights.\udEven if some extreme drop height\s were included in\udthe sampled data, it is often the case that such events\udare considered unlikely to occur and are thus discounted\udto attain an engineering and economic\udcompromise. With this approach, it is conceded thatthe cushioning system will not be effective for a\udnumber of extreme, statistically uncommon, events.\udIn order to address this limitation, the mechanical\udbehaviour of a multi-layered cushioning system,\udincorporating a sacrificial layer (or crumple element)\udhas been investigated. For the purpose of this study,\udcorrugated paperboard material was used as a prototype\udto study the effectiveness of the concept