Explore best practices to better provide quantitative information about tear resistance, puncture resistance, peel strength, heat seal strength, and durability of materials used in flexible and rigid packaging, and finished packaging products.

1. Are there hidden errors in your data?
TIPS & TRICKS for PACKAGING TESTING

2. WHY PERFORM PACKAGING TESTING?
Testing provides quantitative information about tear resistance, puncture resistance, peel strength, heat seal strength, and durability of materials used in flexible and rigid packaging, and finished packaging products.
Insufficient or inadequate packaging can result in
damaged, spoiled or lost product, liability claims, unsatisfied consumers, and ultimately …
a direct negative impact
on your company’s
bottom line.

3. PACKAGE TESTING CAN BE TOUGH
Signal Conditioning plays a critical role in the accuracy of data captured.
Package tests are often peel tests, so the test signals contain many short, sharp peaks and troughs.
Packaging can be delicate and easily damaged by improper fixtures, grips or jaw faces.

4. PACKAGE TESTING CAN BE TOUGH
Sometimes there is a fine line between being too easy and too difficult to open a package.
Does your test data allow you to distinguish between the two, especially when the application is critical?

5. COMMON CHALLENGES IN PACKAGE TESTING
Test Types
•Are you performing the correct test for your products?
Grip Slippage and Extrusion
•Are you using the best grips for your test?
Data Collection & Bandwidth Settings
•Are you viewing all peaks and troughs?
•Are you filtering out any relevant parts of the test signal?

6. TEST TYPES Are you performing the best tests for your materials or components?

7. TEST TYPES: PEEL
180° Peel ASTM D3330 BS EN 28510-2 ISO 8510-2 ASTM D1000
T-Peel
BS 5350-C12 ASTM D5170 ASTM F88 ISO 11339
90° Peel
BS EN 28510-1 ISO 8510-1 ISO 29862 ASTM D5109 ASTM D2861 ASTM D5375
Adhesive
Rigid Stainless Steel Plate

8. TEST TYPE: TACK
Dwell
1 sec.
Dwell
1 sec.
Probe 0.197” diam.
Adhesive
1”-square adhesive contact area
Loop of tape
Probe Tack
ASTM D2979 Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive
Loop Tack
BS EN 1719 ASTM D6195 FINAT FTM9 Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive Tapes

9. OTHERS
TENSILE
ASTM D882 ASTM D412 ASTM D638 ISO 527-1, 2, 3
PUNCTURE (static or impact)
MIL-STD-3010 ASTM D5748 ASTM D7192
COMPRESSION

10. FIXTURING Are you using the correct grips or fixtures for your application?

11. WHICH GRIPS ARE BEST?
Using the correct grips is not always straightforward. Certain gripping mechanisms work best for different types of tests, materials, and maximum loads.
Ultimately, 2 things should be avoided:
SLIPPAGE FROM THE JAW FACE
JAW BREAKS

12. SPECIAL PEEL FIXTURING

13. DATA RATE & BANDWIDTH Are your system settings correct?

14. Data is collected from the frame (load and other analog input devices) in an analog voltage format, and must be converted to a digital signal in order to be read and processed by software.
The analog voltage signals need to be filtered in order to capture a digital signal that both makes sense and is usable, i.e., to filter out unwanted data from the signal.
We filter these incoming signals to block out what is usually high-frequency “noise” by adding a filter to the incoming data, thus adjusting the bandwidth of the system.
An ideal bandwidth filters out noise and is able to capture the quickest events within a test.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY BANDWIDTH?

15. SYSTEM BANDWIDTH
The frequency range (-fc to fc) in which a signal’s amplitude is non-zero,
which defines the responsiveness of the system when converting data into an electrical signal.
Frequency (Hz)
fc
Signal Amplitude
Lower Bandwidth Systems: filter out quick, transient signals that can result in truncated curves and missing peak values
Higher Bandwidth Systems: track more quickly varying signals that result in an output that more closely approximates actual events

16. AN EXAMPLE
Same exact data …
Different bandwidths

17. DATA ACQUISITION RATE
How often a signal is saved
50 Hz Data Acquisition
1 kHz Data Acquisition
Data shown is an approximation
Data Acquisition Rate Too Low: not capturing all of the important events in a test
Data Acquisition Rate Just Right: ensure that relevant and important peaks and troughs in data appear in a test

18. SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ME?
Data Acquisition Rate and Bandwidth are important factors for peel testing because, together, they dictate what data is captured from the system and displayed on the test graph.
Bandwidth should be adjustable to capture quick events, such as the peaks and troughs of a peel test curve
Data Acquisition Rate should be adjusted according to the bandwidth to ensure appropriate visualization of the filtered signal
General Rule of Thumb:
Data Rate should be on the order of 10X the Bandwidth in order to gather meaningful, accurate data (see ASTM E1942)

19. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!