A white paper handbook telling you everything you need to know about strapping and how to buy the right one for you.
Shipping is an essential part of any product-based business, but it comes with an assortment of risks. Of these, product damage is one of the most common and costly. Freight can shift while in transit or handling, or be jolted out of position by shocks or sudden movements.
Strapping helps alleviate this problem by providing a cost-efficient, readily available means of securing packages and pallet loads. There are many types of strapping available, such as steel, polyester, and polypropylene, each of them with their own gauges and recommended applications.
This handbook will explain the most common types of strapping, their advantages and disadvantages, and help you determine which strap is the right one for your needs.
What Is Strapping?
Strapping is a flat, flexible material that helps minimize product damage by keeping the load under tension. This tension prevents the load from shifting or slipping out of place. Additional edge protection can be added to protect corners and further stabilize the load.
Strapping fulfills five primary functions in the packaging process:
1. Unitizing
Bundles of product are assembled into an orderly stack or block. Strapping is then applied as needed to compress the stack together and therefore package it as one “unit” of product. Sample Industries: Metals, Forestry
2. Palletizing
Large numbers of product are stacked onto a pallet for easy transportation and handling. Strapping is used both to retain stack integrity and secure the stack to the pallet. Sample Industries: Bottle & Can, Consumer Product
3. Baling
Large amounts of loose material are gathered together into one bundle, which is compressed into a “bale” by multiple strap Sample Industries: Cotton, Hay, Corrugated
4. Reinforcing
Strapping reinforces pallets or units already secured by other means. Often used in conjunction with stretch wrapping. Sample Industries: Bottle & Can, Consumer Product
5. Closing
Strapping is used to help close and seal product containers such as boxes and crates. Sample Industries: Meat Packers, Photocopy Paper.
Fast Fact: The North American Transportation Statistics Database reports that in 2009, over 460 million tons of freight was shipped over Canadian roadways, and over 1.7 billion tons of freight shipped over U.S. railways.
How Strapping Works
All strapping is applied under tension. This tension imposes compressive forces on a stack of items or packages. The compressive force pushes the individual items together and increases the frictional forces between adjacent surfaces. This reduces shear and helps prevent items from shifting relative to both other items and the pallet. The tension has to be properly balanced so that it keeps the load secure, but does not damage the product. Edge protection is useful in this regard.
Strapping Terms
Break load: The amount of force required to break a strap. An applied tension’s working range is normally far below this limit.
Creep: Permanent deformation of the strap due to extended amounts of stress.
Elongation: How much a strap will stretch when under tension.
Elongation recovery: How much tension the strap will recover after being stretched.
Retained tension: How much tension a strap can consistently apply after over an extended amount of time.
Shear: Amount of stress applied to a surface in a tangential direction.
Stress relaxation: How much straps under constant strain stretch to accommodate stress.