Large bending behavior of creased paperboard. I. Experimental investigations

• Large bending of creased paperboard studied experimentally in the range 0–180°.
• Unloading path appears to be practically independent of the crease typology.
• Qualitative mechanical behavior dramatically depends on crease indentation depth.
• Moment loading response function with two peaks followed by unstable branches.
• Unreliability of creased paperboard response requiring real-time controlled robot.

The large bending behavior of a creased paperboard is studied in the range of rotation θ ∊ [0°, 180°] – new results, apparently not reported previously in literature – with the aim to point out some crucial aspect involved in an adaptive robotic manipulation of the industrial cartons.The loading tests show a great variability of the mechanical behavior, depending dramatically on the crease indentation depth (also for the specimens obtained from the same carton): (a) when the damage induced during the crease formation is relatively small, the bending response is unusually complex: the moment constitutive function, mL(θ), presents (up to) two peaks followed by unstable branches; (b) for greater indentation, the mL(θ) is monotone.In the unloading case the response mU(θ) is always monotone and is practically independent of the formation conditions of the crease. These behaviors can be easily described analytically using (piecewise) third degree splines.In a companion paper, the erection of a typical carton corner with unstable constitutive behavior is fully analyzed to detect the possible criticalities.

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