Evaluation of Shock-Proof Performance of New Cushioning System for Portable Packaging of Apples

抄録

Mechanical damage due to vibration and/or shock during transport is a primary factor in inducing disorder in appearance of fresh produce. Thus, designing of cushioning packaging for fresh produce is necessary. As cushioning materials, paper-and/or plastic-based materials are usually used for fresh produce. Especially, plastic-based materials possess suitable cushioning properties to reduce the damage due to shock and vibration. However, it is difficult to recycle these materials compared with paper-based ones. Therefore, it might be ideal to reduce the use of plastic based-materials as much as possible. Based on the aforementioned information, for apple fruit, we evaluated the shock-proof performance of a new cushioning system for portable packaging using a two-ply pulp molded tray instead of the conventional foam net. The results of measurements of peak acceleration (P_ACC) and velocity change (V_C) with the drop height of 0.2 m and 0.4 m using a dummy fruit, and shock test using various P_Acc and V_C with apple fruit suggested that the proposed cushioning system exhibits superior cushioning performance than that of the conventional packaging system using foam net.