Drop impact resistance of fluid-filled plastic containers

Plastic containers are extensively used for transportation and storage of a vast variety of fluids due to their low production cost and easy manufacturing. Nevertheless, they are prone to sudden failure when subjected to impact loading, such as drop impact. There is a basic lack of understanding of the fundamental mechanisms leading to such failure as well as the effects of parameters, such as pressure, strain rate, container design, material properties, etc.. The main aim of this study is to investigate the behaviour of water-filled blow-moulded polyethylene containers sunbjected to drop impact, and the mechanisms leading to their failure in order to be able to predict when such failure will occur. To this end, a combined experimental-numerical investigation is applied. Standard and instrumented drop impact tests are carried out, in parallel with extensive numerical simulations performed using finite-volume based fluid-structure-fracture interaction procedures. This study can be very useful in design of plastic containers as well as to all researchers dealing with various fluid-structure-fracture interaction problems.