Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1511664
32 PalletCentral • November-December 2023 palletcentral.com 32 PalletCentral • November-December 2023 palletcentral.com Technology The NWPCA PDS development team has been studying optimized unit loads data. This study reveals data on plastic pail performance for both wooden pallets and packaging. By Kristen DeLack, PE Plastic Pail Analysis on WOODEN PALLETS I nterest in improving environmental outcomes is growing like stickweed along pasture fencing during late summer. System-level unit load design is an important technique to ensure and demonstrate that environmental impacts are minimized in tandem with overall costs for our industry. Over the last seven years, the PDS development team has been working analysis tools that will facilitate wholistic optimization of unit loads including both wooden pallets and packaging. is year will mark the completion and release of the initial suite of unit load design tools. A new pail strength analysis feature joins the corrugated box and sheet good strength analyses already a part of the Pallet Design System™ (PDS). How plastic pails perform when they are not uniformly loaded has not been well studied. Past testing was done to a limited extent and not well documented. is research dramatically extended our understanding of pails, not only for the wooden pallet industry but also the plastic pail industry. NWPCA's Kristen DeLack worked closely with Ph.D. candidate Mary Paz Alvarez and VA Tech on the project. e goal was to obtain a method to predict pail collapse based on typical load distributions encountered on wooden pallets. Kristen based the general calculation method on advanced finite element analysis (FEA) techniques that she used extensively in the oil and gas industry to design suction caissons, large structures used to anchor floating offshore platforms to the seabed. "It was heartwarming to get out my old slides that I used to train beginning engineers on how to design suction piles against collapse and adapt them to help Mary get started with FEA. e Pallet Foundation has sponsored Mary's graduate studies through her Master's and now Ph.D. degrees. She started with the big picture of a full unit load and progressed into the minute details of how loads imparted to segments of an individual pail can impact its failure," DeLack remarked. "e opportunity to work directly with industry engineers while doing research is a rare thing in academia. I hope that this will serve her well with her new career at Wisconsin-Stout in their packaging program and hope that this will serve as a new standard for future sponsorships." iStock/Baloncici