Design of low residue packs by Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)

Many essential creams and gels, e.g. toothpaste, shampoo, antiseptics, are provided in flexible plastic tubes and some residue is invariably left, depending on the user, which is wasteful and environmentally undesirable. This is an enduring consumer complaint to Unilever. It adversely affects their business and sustainability profile. This project aims, through computational simulation, to understand how the interaction of product and pack affects residue in order to provide new solutions. The project will pioneer the first use in Unilever of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) which is an exciting new meshless computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for highly non-linear flows with complex, free-surface motions. These products are referred to as Non-Newtonian fluids where the SPH group has general expertise.