PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

BOTTLE MAKING 38 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 www.petpla.net Bottles, performs and closures, 2 nd Edition – part 5 Verification of the 3D design through finite-element simulation Simulation of the mechanical behaviour of a bottle, e.g., under top load or internal pressure, can avoid costly mould modifications, shorten the overall time to market, and allow qualitative comparisons of design variants. Such simulations are possible using the FEM. In this part we look at how the simulation of mechanical behaviour of the bottle can support the bottle design process. Ottmar Brandau has newly revised his book, “Bottles, Pre- forms and Closures” first published by hbmedia, and now to be re-issued under the Elsevier imprint. PETplanet insider is publishing extracts from successive chapters in a series of articles in forthcoming issues. Modern high-end CAD systems already include a finite-element (FE) module for simple, or in some cases even complex, simulations. This means that the FE simulation can be made simultaneously with the CAD design of the bottle described in the previous section. For more accurate computations and special tasks such as the simulation of the barrier prop- erties, higher-value stand-alone FE expert systems are available, such as Ansys and B-Sim.