Product Design
Redesign of Plastic Bottle Closure to Eliminate Failure
By Dr. Duane Priddy Sr. · Published December 19, 2018
Pictured: Translucent plastic bottles with ribbed screw caps, lit in blue against a dark background
Dr. Duane Priddy Sr. (Cofounder & CEO), Plastic Expert Group
The client manufactures plastic bottles for chemical solutions. At the end of the threads is a tab that produces a clicking sound when the screw cap was fully seated. Occasionally a tab would break off the bottle. Our experts evaluated the current design and performed computer modeling using finite element analysis (FEA) to redesign the bottle and eliminate the failures.
Figure 1. Photographs of the bottle with the tab (left) and with tab missing after breakage (right).
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