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Design and Optimization Strategies of a High-Performance Vented Box
Published on: June 9, 2023
Use of advanced modeling techniques to optimize thermal packaging designs
Richard M Formato1, Raffaele Potami, Iftekhar Ahmed
1Cold Chain Technologies, Inc., 29 Everett Street, Holliston, MA 01746, USA.
PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology
|April 20, 2011
Summary
Advanced modeling accurately simulates thermal shipper performance, outperforming traditional methods. This enables faster, cost-effective design of reliable cold chain packaging for pharmaceuticals.
Area of Science:
- Pharmaceutical packaging
- Thermal engineering
- Computational fluid dynamics
Background:
- Pharmaceutical cold chain logistics require reliable temperature control for sensitive products.
- Traditional thermal shipper design relies on time-consuming and resource-intensive trial-and-error methods.
- Accurate simulation tools are needed to accelerate the development of optimized packaging solutions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To demonstrate the capability of advanced modeling techniques for simulating transient temperature responses in convective flow-based thermal shippers.
- To validate a coupled conduction-convection model against empirical data for a polyurethane (PUR) thermal shipper.
- To compare the accuracy of the coupled model with a conduction-only model.
Main Methods:
- A detailed case study involving a 2-inch-wall PUR thermal shipper design.
- Numerical simulation of transient temperature response under a 96-hour summer profile.
- Comparison of simulation results with empirical chamber data.
- Control simulation comparing coupled conduction-convection model with a conduction-only model.
Main Results:
- Numerical simulations closely matched empirical data (within ±1 °C).
- The coupled conduction-convection model accurately predicted temperature trends, unlike the conduction-only model (ΔT > 6 °C error).
- Geometrical locations of simulated temperature extremes corresponded well with empirical measurements.
Conclusions:
- Advanced modeling techniques can accurately simulate the thermal behavior of passive refrigerated shippers.
- Validated thermal modeling accelerates evaluation and optimization of new packaging designs.
- This approach reduces design time and costs while enhancing shipper performance and reliability.
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