Lock-in infrared thermography for the evaluation of the structural performance of corrugated paperboard structures

This paper uses Lock-in infrared thermography to evaluate the stress and damage states in sandwich structured corrugated paperboard packaging. To this end corrugated boxes with and without handholds were subjected to compression loading and the resultant Lock-in thermal images captured. The stress contours around a handhold obtained from the Lock-in images enabled the failure mode and the structural response of the boxes to be assessed. As a result of this study it is shown that Lock-in infrared thermography is both fast and reliable, and as such has the potential to be a valuable tool for evaluating the structural performance of paperboard boxes and for rapidly evaluating different designs and materials.