Easy Opening: Opening Behaviour and Seam Integrity

Packaging has to fulfill a variety of requirements. Opening behaviour is essential for the customers in terms of product acceptance.

The kind of packaging including peel system and its production, sealed seam design (geometry), sealing process parameters and also sealing and test conditions have significant influences on opening behaviour.

In order to adjust the opening force on packaging with regard to secure closure and easy opening and to ensure seam quality from production, transport, storage till consumption, it is important to describe unknown factors qualitatively and quantitatively and derive information for the practice.

Within this IVLV –Project an application for a research project will be prepared. Content of the re-search project that will be applied are the description of the initiation peel and continuation peel pro-cesses for typical peel systems and the detection of parameters for a secure seal process, while ensur-ing an easy-to-open packaging. Therefore, the relation between peel system, geometry of sealed seam and opening behaviour has to be investigated. Material-scientific investigations of peel processes under different test conditions (peel angle, speed, time, temperature) are used to describe factors influencing the peel process. These findings, obtained on film strips, have to be applied to packages.

The main tasks of this IVLV-Project are the coordination of project contents with the industry, the selection and definition of typical material combinations for the peel systems being investigated, the determination of appropriate measurement and analysis procedures, project scheduling, preparation and submission of project application to the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations (AiF).

Current information about science-topics around “Easy Opening” and their results are provided on the homepage www.easy-opening.com by the Fraunhofer AVV.