Characterization of property variations in paperboard samples

Sammanfattning: In today’s paper and board production, quality control is made on a single cross direction (CD)sample from each tambour. As several different properties are analysed, only a limited number of measurement results are obtained for one property. Therefore, the measurement results might not be representative for the properties of the entire width of the tambour. The first objective of the project was to investigate variations of thickness, surface roughness and mechanical properties with a much higher resolution and number of measurements. The results of the measurement were compared with the routine quality control of the mill. The second objective of the project was to evaluate the influence of the wire shake unit in the centreply on the properties of the produced board. The measurements were performed on Iggesundpaperboard samples.The high-resolution measurements were performed using the STFI structural thicknessmeasurement device, an OptiTopo topography measurement device and a modified Autolinedevice at RISE Bioeconomy. The statistical evaluation of the results was performed in Matlab.Standard deviation, local variance and a frequency analysis were calculated for the thicknessmeasurements. Only standard deviation was considered for the topography data. For the mechanical properties, the distribution was evaluated using the Weibull distribution, since theresults had a single-sided distribution. In addition, the properties were analysed as a function of their location, for example to identify deterministic deviations in cross direction.The results of the first part of the project showed that the everyday control conducted in Iggesund is sufficient for most of the properties. Greatest difference was found at the edges ofthe samples, where Iggesund standard quality control does not detect a major variation inproperties, as no measurements are performed that close to the edge of the web. For example,at one edge, the high frequent measurements showed a significant drop in thickness which were not detected with the everyday quality control.In the second part of the project, the effect of a shake unit on the paper properties was evaluated. Here it was seen that the thickness variation were reduced, which also can be interpreted as an improvement of formation in the centre ply of the paperboard. As for thesurface roughness a slight improvement was found. Also for the mechanical properties, the shake unit appeared to improve the uniformity of the product