Evaluation of Shock-Proof Performance of New Cushioning System for Portable Packaging of Apples

Mechanical damage due to vibration and/or shock during transport is a primary factor in inducing disorder in appearance of fresh produce. Thus, designing of cushioning packaging for fresh produce is necessary. As cushioning materials, paper-and/or plastic-based materials are usually used for fresh produce. Especially, plastic-based materials possess suitable cushioning properties to reduce the damage due to shock and vibration. However, it is difficult to recycle these materials compared with paper-based ones. Therefore, it might be ideal to reduce the use of plastic based-materials as much as possible. Based on the aforementioned information, for apple fruit, we evaluated the shock-proof performance of a new cushioning system for portable packaging using a two-ply pulp molded tray instead of the conventional foam net. The results of measurements of peak acceleration (PACC) and velocity change (VC) with the drop height of 0.2 m and 0.4 m using a dummy fruit, and shock test using various PAcc and VC with apple fruit suggested that the proposed cushioning system exhibits superior cushioning performance than that of the conventional packaging system using foam net.