This post references several customer papers presented within the Consumer Goods / Consumer Packaged Goods track at this year’s Science in the Age of Experience conference. I was a session chair for this track.
Simulating the manufacturing process for consumer goods and consumer packaged goods is a well-established method for improving manufacturing efficiency and product quality. However, a more recent trend is to use simulation to engineer a better performing product. That means modeling the product in use.
Simulation for Consumer Packaged Goods
For the consumer packaged goods industry, that generally means modeling the behavior during shipping or under an abusive load (for example, dropping a bottle of detergent at the store).
A paper by Mukherjee shows how results from simulating the drop of a fluid-filled plastic container can be used to guide design modifications and lead to an optimal container design that is both lighter (using less materials), but also stronger.
Simulation for Consumer Goods
For the consumer goods industry (clothing, sporting goods, etc.) simulating product usage in most cases means modeling the interaction of the product with the human body. Modeling the human body can be quite complex. Material properties are not readily available, the kinematics are complicated (joints, muscles, tendons), and determining a representative size and shape is a challenge. The cost of developing the human body models will pay off in the end as they can be reused many times.
A paper from Dr. Nishiwaki of the ASICS Corporation’s Institute of Sport Science shows how a model of the human foot was developed and used to help understand the behavior of running shoes. A paper from Chris Pieper from Kimberly-Clark discusses a way to create human body models more quickly to allow simulation of products with a wider variety of human body sizes and shapes.
Continue reading to view the customer papers referenced above from the 2016 Science in the Age of Experience conference
Virtual Modeling’s Role in Improving Impact Performance of Plastic Containers, Sumit Mukherjee, Plastic Technologies, Inc.
Abstract: The packaging industry is on the brink of process change—including manufacturing, materials and their applications. New concepts are being born via computer screens and virtually nurtured to create commercially-viable packages. This is taking place before ever touching the mold, creating an actual package or conducting a physical test.
It’s important to understand various aspects of processing, material properties, package design, product characteristics, as well as specifications and performance parameters that need to be met. Design guidelines have matured to the point where “moldable” geometry is part of the CAD software’s intelligent database.
This helps take concepts, convert them to viable production ready designs and provide a degree of confidence that the package can be manufactured. However, the output from this stage does not tell us whether or not a specific performance characteristic—such as improving the drop impact performance—has been achieved. This is where the second component of virtual modeling comes into play. The intricate CAD geometry can be manipulated to add further definition regarding thickness and material properties. Read the full paper
Three-dimensional numerical foot model for running shoe designing, Tsuyoshi Nishiwaki and Mai Nonogawa, ASICS Corporation, Institute of Sport Science
Abstract: In the production process of running shoes, multiple requirement functions such as stability, cushioning, and comfort must be designed. Especially a lot of researchers have pointed out the importance of stability which means the management of excessive foot joint motions, because the long term running with poor stability shoes causes various lower extremity injuries.
In this study, running shoe stability prediction method is proposed by using Abaqus. The numerical foot model constructed by stacking computed tomography images has 24 bones, cartilage, soft tissue, plantar fascia, and 3 ligaments. As loading conditions, the forces and torques at the ankle joint which can be obtained by the inverse dynamics of the 3-dimensional ground reaction forces during the contact phase in running were used.
In order to check the validity of the numerical model, heel eversion angles on the polymer foams with 3 kinds of hardness were calculated and compared with the practical running motion analytical results. Therefore it was confirmed that the numerical model could predict heel version angle during the contact phase. This indicates that the proposed model is a powerful tool in the practical running shoe designing. Read the full paper
Leveraging Low Cost Body Models for Personal Care Product Evaluation, Chris Pieper, Kimberly-Clark Corporation
Abstract: Simulating the human body is complex, and detailed models have been used to describe aspects of its physiology. Examples of applications include simulated crash tests, joint replacements and even a modelling of a beating heart. When evaluating a product interacting with the body, the body may not be the primary analysis objective, but rather is a necessary participant in the simulation.
Disposable personal care products, such as absorbent incontinence garments or feminine care offerings, often interact intimately with the body and are intended to fit a range of body sizes and shapes. Virtual evaluations of these products often consider many body sizes and shapes; however, the cost of complex human models for product evaluation can limit the number of use cases considered.
Here, cost refers to the price and resource expense of obtaining geometry, creating a finite element definition and the computation of the model. This paper describes techniques used to provide low cost virtual articulated humans suitable for product evaluation. Read the full paper
Want to read more customer papers?
If you’re interested in reading other papers presented at this year’s Science in the Age of Experience, please access the complete conference proceedings within the SIMULIA Learning Community¹.
