Saturday, April 7, 2012

Design to Cost: bottles and other containers

For a given volume, if the design of a container tends to shape it flat, the container section size (diameter if round, etc.) has to be immense, hence requesting much material for its manufacturing.
If the container section is very small, the container has to be very high to accommodate the volume,  hence requesting much material for its manufacturing.
The quantity of material necessary for manufacturing a container of a given volume and shape, versus its height (or versus its section), follows an "U" type curve, with an optimal point at the base of the U.
Other considerations put aside, there is for each material, shape, and volume to encompass, an optimal height versus section to target in Designing to Cost.
But I found that almost no industry (water packaging, etc.) has considered this point when designing new containers!

No comments:

Post a Comment