Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This research examines the effect of simulated transportation distribution testing on insulated thermal containers, also known as cold chain shippers. This study compares the thermal performance of an insulated thermal container in its ideal pristine condition with no external factors that challenge the integrity of the package to insulated thermal containers that are subjected to common and acceptable test inputs using established and accepted industry package performance and simulation standards. Currently, little research evaluates the thermal performance of insulated thermal containers after simulated distribution testing. A total of nine different real-world scenarios using test standards of varying severities or other real-life scenarios were evaluated to determine how much effect transportation distribution would has on the deterioration and degradation of the performance of an insulated thermal container. There were two replicates of each scenario with each container containing two thermocouples to always monitor the thermal performance of the containers. The study involved the use of a thermal environmental chamber, thermal data loggers, compression testing systems, drop testing systems, and vibration testing systems. The data collected confirms that external events that challenge the integrity of the thermal insulated containers have a negative effect on the performance of the containers ability to maintain proper temperatures. This data is valuable to the packaging industry because the current industry standard was to evaluate all thermal shippers using a best-case scenario. Meaning that if the performance degradation of the shipper was not accounted for, cold chain shipments might fail due to going out of tolerances (and therefore affecting the efficacy of the product) earlier than expected.
Recommended Citation
Tang, Edmund B.
()
"The Effects of Transportation Distribution on the Performance of Insulated Thermal Containers,"
Journal of Applied Packaging Research: Vol. 17:
No.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://repository.rit.edu/japr/vol17/iss1/1
