Research Update: New funding from ICPF and FBA to investigate box compression strength
Image 1. Undergraduate students working on ICPF/FBA grant project.
Dr. Laszlo Horvath and Dr. Eduardo Molina has received new funding from the Fibre Box Association (FBA) and the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF) for a research project focused on the investigation the effect of pallet overhang on box compression strength.
Undergraduate students, Matt Simonson (rising junior, Franklin Lakes, NJ), Alonda Johnson (rising senior, Newport News, VA) and Kyle Main (rising junior, Newport News, VA), and graduate student, Saewhan Kim (Ph.D., South Korea), have been selected to work on the project. The research will involve the testing of more than 1,900 corrugated boxes to evaluate the effect of different levels of overhang on the strength of corrugated boxes. The investigated overhang values will range from 0.25 in. to 3 in. and also evaluate multiple box locations on pallets.
The packaging industry relies on a series of factors to calculate a box’s compression strength and its expected performance in the field. These parameters fall into two generalized categories: those impacting box performance because of their environment, and those impacting box performance because of how the box is being used. Current industry realities raise questions about how to truly represent what happens in a modern unit of stacked boxes. The results of the experiments conducted during this research project will be used to update the safety factors listed in the Fiber Box Handbook.