Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/507696
40 PalletCentral • March-April 2015 palletcentral.com PRESSURE MAT: A FIRST LOOK This past year, NWPCA began the preliminary phase of an ambitious research and development project, with the goal of expanding the structural behavior analysis in PDS of entire unitized loads, not just pallets. The cornerstone of this effort was the purchase of a state-of-the-art contact pressure measurement system, which was attained through a generous grant from The Pallet Foundation. For the first time, this system has been used to measure the real-time compression stresses between a pallet and the customer's tertiary containers within a unit. For example, the recommendation for the pail pallet design was to change the location of the top deckboards to support a greater portion of the periphery of the pails. The increased pail periphery supported by the deckboards should lead to lower magnitude stresses on the pail, as more of the pail can share in supporting the load. Preliminary experiments have indicated that this may indeed be the case. When the pressure mat was used to explore the effect of increased periphery deckboard support on pails, a decrease in stress on the pails was observed, as shown here. The different colored areas show where the pail bottom is in contact with the deckboard, with "cooler" colors representing areas of low stress, and "warmer" colors representing higher stress. As seen in the figure, the pail that has more support on its periphery has fewer areas of red with more green and blue, indicating lower stresses. Pail with less of the periphery supported Pail with more of the periphery supported