Dassault Systemes > Case Studies > Plastic Technologies, Inc.: Leveraging Simulation for Lightweighting and Root-Cause Analysis

Plastic Technologies, Inc.: Leveraging Simulation for Lightweighting and Root-Cause Analysis

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

SIMULIA
Perfect Package Industry Solution Experience
Abaqus
CATIA

Tech Stack

Finite Element Analysis
Simulation-led Design
CAD Tools

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements
Innovation Output

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods
Retail

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Inventory Management
Digital Twin

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Plastic Technologies Inc. (PTI) is a leader in plastic package design services. The company has a broad range of clients, including consumer product companies, plastic processors, and material suppliers. In a typical year, PTI performs as many as 500 unique design developments and an average of five iterations per design for clients. The company recently completed its 10,000th bottle design since its inception in 1985. PTI employs state-of-the-art CAD tools, including Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA application, in the development of innovative designs for its customers.

The Challenge

Plastic Technologies Inc. (PTI), a leader in plastic package design services, was seeking a more cost-effective and efficient alternative to extensive physical prototyping and testing. The company wanted to help its customers lightweight plastic container designs and aid in root-cause analysis of product failures. The focus was on designing lighter-weight versions of current packaging to reduce costs and meet consumers’ demand for more sustainable products. However, achieving the optimal design that can offset lightweight material composition with a structure that still meets stringent performance requirements was a challenge.

The Solution

PTI adopted SIMULIA, a key component of Perfect Package Industry Solution Experience, in combination with the company’s proprietary simulation tool, to vet lightweight PET container designs based on top load and side-load performance in a virtual world. Abaqus also helped PTI’s efforts to optimize preform parameters and eliminate performance failures. The simulation-led design approach enabled the PTI design team to greatly reduce the amount of time and resources spent on building and testing physical prototypes. Abaqus was often employed in concert with PTI’s proprietary virtual-prototyping software, which was used to simulate the reheating of preforms, replicate the blow molding of containers, and predict the material thickness distribution of associated mechanical properties.

Operational Impact

Realistic simulation with Abaqus has enabled PTI to reduce development costs.
The company achieved faster time to market for its customers.
PTI improved design and production troubleshooting and diagnoses, giving it a strong competitive edge.
The simulation results helped in the development process in multiple ways, including screening the most promising candidates, providing critical feedback on what geometric features, material properties and thickness distribution will guarantee better performance and possible light weighting for existing containers, and encouraging more innovative thinking to facilitate creative, viable solutions.

Quantitative Benefit

The top-load strength of a plastic bottle drops nearly in half from 19 lbf (pound force) to 12 lbf as the container is light-weighted from 17g to 14g.
The simulated data was physically validated by molding samples at both 17g and 14g, and the predictions were within 90% of the actual observed values.