Simulation of Plastic Bottle Compression with Radioss
Altair EmployeeOverview
Figure 1: Model Overview
This project explains how Radioss can be used to simulate compression test of plastic bottles.
In the plastic bottle industry, the design of the bottle should be such that it not only looks good, but also has the structural integrity to ensure that the bottles can be handled and stacked without failure.
To ensure that, compression tests must be made and the maximum force and displacement before buckling should be measured accurately and must reach the required values.
Furthermore, the content of the bottle can play a crucial role in its buckling behavior.
All of the above are parameters that can be identified using Radioss to help the design engineer to ensure the product performance and even to improve the original design.
Models Details
In all 5 models, the same bottle design has been used with a different content and a different way of modeling it. More precisely:
1- Empty Bottle
2- Bottle with Air
3 and 4- Bottle with Water (2 different formulations)
5- Bottle with Water and Effect of Gravity
Monitored Volume Formulation (/MONVOL) have been used to simulate the behavior of fluids inside the bottle. Air was modeled with /MONVOL/GAS and water with /MONVOL/LFLUID or /MONVOL/PRES. The Effect of Gravity for water formulation was done with the application of an external load (/LOAD/PLOAD).
The empty/open bottle or closed and filled with air demonstrates different buckling modes compared with the bottles filled with water, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Buckling Modes Comparison
This is an expected result that most people can relate with personal experience.
This behavior can be seen also in a Force-Displacement diagram shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Force-Displacement plot
As we can see in Figure 3, the buckling of the bottles containing water is placed in lower displacement but with the application of higher force (x4 compared with empty or air). On the other hand, empty and air-containing bottles buckle in a higher displacement but with the application of a lower force.
Finally, a model with higher imposed displacement rate has been conducted to ensure the quasi-static behavior of the analysis and the models run with both single and double precision options to check the differences and the speed-up that can be achieved.
All the details are provided in the video below, as well as the necessary steps to reproduce the models (also provided) and results.