An approach for improved 3d formability of paper

Paper-based materials constitute a significant share of the world packaging market, successfully competing with plastic packaging. Paper is renewable, recyclable, sustainable and biodegradable material. However,it is not as flexible in terms of package design as plastic materials are. Paper packaging appears in rather simple geometrical forms while plastics can be formed to great variety of shapes. This is due to poor formability of paper. Overcoming of this problem is the key to novel paper packaging applications. Extensibility is considered to be of primary importance for the formability of paper in the processes with fixed paper blanks such as vacuum forming, hydroforming, hot pressing etc. Where it determines the maximum depth of the shapes and their appearance.