Product design and development for beer crate to enhance transportation cost and safety

Proper beverage packaging is one of the most significant factors which drive high quality of product protection during transportation. Especially, “Crate” has been introduced as a package or container for supporting bottles as glass beverage. For the recent design of the crate, gaps between bottles are the main issues which need to be eliminated. During transportation and load-unload activity, vibration and shock around or/and in between bottles might have a direct effect on the beverage quality. The impact or force distributed with high frequency or often enough causes the broken bottles. Proposed in this research is about the alternative design of a crate where the support devices are introduced to reduce force distributed around/in between two consecutive surfaces of two bottles where the gaps or spaces are eliminated. Product Design and Development (PDD) and Finite Element Analysis are applied for accomplishing task. For the force simulation, the different scenarios in static and dynamic platforms are raised where the three designs of crate are compared on each scenario testing; stacking, lifting and interference fit condition. The simulated results illustrated that the developed designs of crate (two versions of design); the crate-assembly style and the crate-fourteen platform could provide more slots for putting the bottles in; the number of glass bottles per crate of 8% and 16%, respectively. This set of results was compared to the existing design based on the same size – external shape consideration. Applying the additional inserts (supporters) could absorb the vibrations and shocks of beer glass bottles during transportation.

合适的饮料包装是保障运输过程中产品高品质防护的核心因素之一。其中，货箱（Crate）作为承载玻璃饮料瓶的包装容器被广泛应用。现有货箱设计中，瓶体间的间隙是亟需解决的核心问题。在运输及装卸作业过程中，瓶体周围及瓶间产生的振动与冲击可能直接影响饮料品质，高频持续分布的冲击力易引发玻璃瓶破损。本研究提出一种新型货箱设计方案，通过增设支撑装置以减小相邻瓶体接触面间的作用力，进而消除瓶体间隙。本研究采用产品设计与开发（Product Design and Development, PDD）方法及有限元分析（Finite Element Analysis, FEA）技术完成全部研究任务。在力仿真环节，本研究构建了静态与动态两类仿真场景，针对三款货箱设计分别开展堆垛、起吊与过盈配合工况下的对比测试。仿真结果表明，本研究提出的两款新型货箱设计——组装式货箱与十四工位货箱——可提供更多瓶体放置槽位，单箱可容纳的玻璃瓶数量分别较同外形尺寸的现有货箱提升8%与16%。本研究将该结果与基于相同外形尺寸的现有货箱设计进行了对比。增设的支撑衬垫（supporters）可有效吸收运输过程中啤酒玻璃瓶所承受的振动与冲击。