Fresh fruit packaging design verification through virtual prototyping technique

Abstract

This study developed a holistic packaging design methodology in the fresh fruit postharvest handling system based on virtual prototyping approach. The method examines the cardboard box compressive strength and fruit cooling rate performances of new designs before manufacturing. It involves computer aided graphics (CAG), computational structural dynamics (CSD), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational heat transfer (CHT) methods. The virtual prototyping took only few hours to provide data on the carton compression strength, airflow resistance characteristics, produce cooling rate, spatiotemporal temperature and produce quality map in the cold chain. Six different (new and commercially available) designs were examined. The different carton designs performed almost equally in maintaining produce quality. The new packaging box design is more compact, hence, with a higher freight density (1720 kg more fruit per reefer than the commercial counterpart). It also enhanced the precooling process throughput (17% faster) and energy usage (30% less power usage).