Investigation of Compression Strength of Bliss Style Corrugated Fiberboard Boxes

The global demand for corrugated fiberboard is projected to experience a significant upsurge in the near future. Based on the end-use, packaging for processed and fresh food categories accounted for approximately 39% of the overall consumption of corrugated fiberboard in 2015. With key advantages such as providing an uninterrupted bottom, laminated corners for higher stacking strength, increased material use efficiency, side cutout options for display at retail and a wide range of styles over other styles of containers, Bliss style boxes find prominence in the agriculture sector. While numerous predictive strength models associating corrugated fiberboard material specifications to the box compression strength (BCT), and ultimately the stacking strength of corrugated containers, have been developed over the past century, there is a considerable lack of studies that include Bliss style containers. The overall aim of this empirical study was to develop a mathematical relationship based on the simplified McKee formula towards predicting BCT of four styles of Bliss boxes. Effects of box styles, length of load-bearing walls and number of internal corners on the overall BCT were explored using data collected from lab-based testing. The proposed mathematical model includes a box design constant (k), edge crush test values, board thickness, and three lengths of load-bearing walls (total, single-wall, and double-wall) of the containers. The k-values for each bliss box design, explored through linear regression analyses, explain up to 98.1% of the differences in BCT between the styles. The proposed mathematical model can assist practitioners with accelerating packaging development cycle times and optimizing packaging designs