The IKV institute at Aachen university in Germany is developing a PET bottle simulation concept together with Nestlé Waters at Vittel in France to enable top loadings to be predicted.

Materials account for 70% of the cost of producing PET bottles, so cutting material content is both economically and environmentally beneficial. However, the IKV says there is no available simulation to gauge the impact of lightweighting on top load.

Existing structural simulation methods are too imprecise and not capable of sufficiently taking hollow item properties into account, says the institute.

IKV and Nestlé aim to develop a structural simulation that will enable mechanical behaviour of stretch blow moulded bottles to be predicted on the basis of stretch blowing process conditions as well as wall thickness distribution and the degree of stretch.