The best way to calculate Bursting Strength of a 5 Ply Corrugated Box

The bursting Strength of any material is one of the most important quality traits that can play a decisive role in maintaining the quality and overall strength of the materials. The main use of bursting strength is made in the paper and packaging industries as well as textile industries. The paper is a material that is used in almost every industry for various purposes. It is used in the education and publishing industry for printing and writing. It is also a main constituent in the packaging industries as most of the packaging materials are made with the use of paper in them. Additionally, the fabrics made in the textile industries are also used for many domestic as well as industrial applications. Now it is to be noticed that paper, packaging and fabrics are used in such conditions that they are subjected to very high forces and pressure that can easily damage them. The manufacturers of (Bursting strength Tester) these products must ensure that they are adopting the best manufacturing processes to ensure best level of strength and agility of the products so that they could survive the harshest conditions of working.

Industrial Use of Fabrics

The industrial fabrics are used in many different applications such as automobiles, filtering systems, printing mechanisms and so forth. The industrial fabrics can be made with both natural and synthetic fibres. The materials that can be used for producing industrial quality of fabrics include fiberglass yarn, Nylon, Kevlar, Teflon, polyester, Aramid fibres and graphite. In addition to industrial fabrics, the fabrics are also used for domestic usages as well. Clothing apparels are a very good example of domestic usage of fabrics. The most common requirement of the industrial as well as domestic fabrics is to have enough strength so that they could survive the harsh environment and extensive forces acting upon them in their respective working applications. The bursting strength can be very helpful in ensuring the best possible strength of the fabrics that can help in ensuring that the fabrics can serve the application for which they are meant to use, with better performance without any damage or failure due to any bursting or rupture force. The manufacturers of the fabric materials need to ensure that they test each and every aspect of the fabrics so that they are capable of providing the best quality of the fabrics to the clients.

Use of Corrugated Sheets in Packaging industries

The packaging industries have a very big responsibility to provide the most suitable packaging options to the manufacturers in other industries so that they can easily package their products for better and safe storage, handling and delivery. When a product is being stored or transported, the most important role is of packaging as it is responsible for providing the maximum level of protection to the products from outer forces as well as other factors that might damage the products. When the transportation of a product is carried out, there are plethora of forces acting upon the products as well as the packaging which can cause serious damage to the packaging and hence products. Now the main concern for every industry is that the packaging needs for every industry are different. Even different products have different packaging requirement hence a single packaging option can never be a viable option for every products and every industry. This is why the manufacturers of packaging materials such as corrugated boxes need to keep in mind that they have to provide the best suited option for the packaging requirements of every industry. For this, the manufacturers must test the quality of the materials and boxes they are manufacturing before they are delivered to the customers. The boxes need to be tested for many different properties such as box compression strength, edge crush strength and bursting strength of the corrugated boxes. The bursting strength gives the measure of the ability of a material to resist the rupture or damage when there is an extreme force is in action.

Bursting Strength of 5 Ply Corrugated boxes

As we discussed, the bursting strength is a very important factor that has a deep impact on the strength of the materials like corrugated sheets and hence can affect the basic properties of the corrugated boxes as well. The Bursting strength is very helpful for the manufacturers of the corrugated packaging boxes in assessment of the quality and strength of the boxes. The manufacturers although it cannot be said that the bursting strength is the ultimate test for determining the quality of the products as there are many other aspects that can impact the quality of the products to a great extent. The manufacturers need to run more test on the materials such as edge crush test, ring crush test and several other testing procedure to ensure the best strength analysis of the corrugated sheets and boxes. Bursting strength is still the most important quantity to calculate to understand the behavior of the products under the forces that may cause rupture of the materials. Now when the products are wrapped in the paper then the paper should always stay on the products so that there is no damage to the surface of the products but at the same time, the outer packaging of the products which is a corrugated sheet box also needs to be strong enough so that no force could penetrate beyond the packaging and harm the products. The bursting strength gives an idea to the manufacturer about how much increment in the strength of the corrugated sheet is needed to survive such forces during storage and transit. Additionally, this also ensures that the strength is not more than that is needed as incorporating more than required strength to the corrugated boxes can be a great loss to the manufacturers of boxes as well. This way, the manufacturers can also ensure the most optimum strength of the boxes and also save a lot of money with the help of determination of bursting strength of a corrugated sheet with a high accuracy and precision.

Bursting Strength Tester Working

Calculating the Bursting Strength of a Corrugated Sheet

The bursting strength of a corrugated sheet can be easily calculated by performing the bursting strength test or the Mullen test. This is the most efficient testing procedure that is designed for testing the bursting strength of variety of materials such as paper, cardboards, corrugated sheets and fabrics. In this way, they can easily assess the quality and strength of the containers made by using these materials as well. The Mullen test is efficient in giving the exact value of force that is required to burst a sheet of material. This value in turn helps in exact assessment of the endurance and strength of the materials and also helps in calculation of the burst factor and bursting index of that material as well. However, the value obtained from Mullen test is not the indicator of how much product or weight per inch of the box can be fit. This type of assessment will require more tests such as edge crush, ring crush, box compression test and so forth.

Bursting Strength test and Bursting strength formula

When the Mullen test is performed, it gives the bursting strength of the specimen is given. This bursting strength can be very helpful, not only in calculation of the strength of the specimen but is also very helpful in determining the bursting factor for the specimen which is also an important quantity that can give critical data about the endurance of the specimen. The bursting factor can be calculated using a mathematical formula that involves bursting strength and GSM of the specimen.

Bursting Factor Formula for Corrugated Box

Once the Mullen test is performed and the bursting strength of the specimen is calculated, you can easily calculate the bursting factor and bursting index of the specimen with simple formulas. The formula for bursting factor is given as:

Burst factor = Burst strength (gf/cm2) / Grammage (grams/m2)

In this formula, the bursting strength is the value obtained from the Mullen test and Grammage is the GSM of the material. The formula for calculating the bursting index is similar to the bursting factor. The only difference is that the bursting index is expressed in terms of pressure or kPa and Grammage. The formula that gives bursting index is as follows:

Burst Index = Burst strength (kPa) / Grammage (Kg/m2)

In this formula, the bursting strength obtained from Mullen test is converted in kPa from gf/m2. The grammage again is the GSM of the material. GSM is given in kg/M2 and can easily be calculated with the help of a GSM cutter and a weighing scale. Once these formulas are applied and the bursting index and factor are calculated, there is very critical information about the strength of the materials can be obtained which can easily be used to optimise the performance of the materials to a great strength.

Performing the Bursting Strength Test/Mullen test

Performing the bursting strength is very easy and it can be easily conducted with the help of a very precise and accurate testing machine called bursting strength tester. It is important to keep in mind that while performing the bursting strength test, all the quality testing standards must be followed as per given in the ISI, BIS and ASTM manuals. Let’s see the steps required to perform the Mullen test.

1. First and foremost step towards performing the test is to prepare the specimen from the sample of material to be tested. A circular sheet should be cut from the sample. It is important that the sheet cut from the sample is larger than the annular clamps of the testing instruments. This will ensure that the specimen stays in place and does not slip during the test. Any kind of slippage can disturb the test reading and compromise its accuracy and reliability.
2. Clamp the specimen in the annular clamps and tighten the clamps to the maximum.
3. Plug in the device in a relevant electrical supply.
4. Switch on the machine and push the “Push to Burst” button.
5. This will start the application of the hydraulic pressure on the specimen through the rubber diaphragm and pressurized glycerine.
6. The application of the hydraulic force is gradually increased and continuously applied on the specimen until the specimen is ruptured or burst. Once there is a rupture in the specimen, the application of hydraulic force is stopped and the bursting strength is recorded in the load cell and is displayed on the digital screen of the device. This is the maximum amount of force that the material can bear without the rupture of damage.

Importance of Bursting Factor

Bursting factor is very important aspect of quality of the corrugated boxes as with the help of the bursting factor, the manufacturers can easily find the maximum bursting strength of the corrugated sheets and can make increments and decrement in the strength as required for a certain application. Good bursting factor implies that the material will not fail easily in case there is a bursting force is applied on it during actual usage in a certain condition.

With all this information, the manufacturers can make an informed decision about making the selection of the packaging materials that can be used for packaging the products so that they can protect the quality of the products during storage, handling and transportation. Although not much, but bursting factor also has a great deal of impact on the stacking strength of corrugated boxes as well.

Paper and Packaging Testing Instruments

For every manufacturer of packaging boxes and containers, attaining best quality is one of the major tasks to accomplish. Now attaining better assurance does not implies that all the products must have the highest strength. It simply means that the corrugated boxes need to have an optimum strength to handle the forces exerted on them. If there is less strength required and the box is incorporated with higher strength, it simply means more losses to the manufacturers. Additionally, if the strength is too low from the required value then it will lead to failure of the packaging. When the manufacturers know the value of the bursting strength of the boxes, they can easily make the changes required to change the strength packaging materials and hence can ensure optimization of the strength and hence ensure better protection. The strength of the corrugated sheets can easily be altered with addition or removal of any layer of paper that used for manufacturing of the sheet.

Pacorr is one of the best bursting strength tester manufacturer and supplier and has been providing the most accurate testing instruments for the packaging and paper industries. The instrument offered by Pacorr is state of the art and is manufactured by following all the guidelines given by ASTM, BIS, ISI and ISO and hence is capable of highest accuracy of the testing date with great precision and also with a great rate of repeatability. The instrument is designed to work in extreme working conditions and is manufactured with high grade mild steel with powder coating to increase its longevity. In addition to that, the device comes in three different variants that are Analogue, Digital and digital-computerized. The liquid used for exerting hydraulic pressure is the lab grade glycerine. The rubber diaphragm is made from high grade industrial rubber for better testing and efficiency. With the help of this machine offered by Pacorr, the manufacturers can easily calculate the bursting factor, bursting index and bursting strength of the packaging materials with great accuracy and precision and then make required changes to ensure that their clients get only the best quality of packaging to protect their products during different conditions.

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