Packages undergo temperature and compression testing

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research 1:46 Packages undergo temperature and compression testing

By:

Clark Dehart

1 Oct 2025 316

Assistant Professor Eduardo Molina and his graduate students in Sustainable Biomaterials in the College of Natural Resources and Environment conduct research on a package's sensitivity to low temperature and high compression. Good packaging design requires researchers to think about protecting the goods inside the package from changes in external temperature and compression forces when they're moved through the shipping process.

Packaging is important because it helps us deliver the product to the final customer. So in my lab what we're working on is finding optimal packaging for different types of products. That means packaging that is more sustainable, that reduces the environmental impact as a whole and helping everybody to be more efficient to move these products around the world. My aim is to develop and evaluate different machine learning algorithms which would help to predict more accurately the percentage of loss in box compression. I love doing hands-on experiments in the lab and evaluating the results. That's kind of motivated me to pursue my PhD in packaging science. So my project basically focuses on fiber-based material and then predicting the thermal performance of the packages that I build. So basically what I do is I go through all kinds of material characterization techniques to build a package so that I can prototype it later and then run it in the field. Virginia Tech, we really are uniquely positioned to conduct packaging, transportation research. Most of our graduate students work in projects that are tied directly with either an industry group or a specific company. In the packaging field, it's nice to be able to see your new knowledge being applied.

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