Quantifying Removal Torque for Application in a New Child‐Resistant and Senior Friendly Package

ABSTRACT Child resistant packaging (CRP) can effectively reduce the access of children under the age of 5 years old when used correctly . Adults over the age of 65 years commonly struggle to open many kinds of CRP and choose to leave the packages open. The goals of this work were (1) to design a testing system to accurately measure an individuals' ability to apply removal toque to a closure, (2) determine the ranges of torque both older adults and children can apply to a standard closure and (3) determine the effectiveness of a novel CRP to reduce the torque generation of children. A custom hand‐held torque test system was created and used to obtain torque data. In total, 49 participants were tested, 25 children and 24 adults. All participants were tested using three variations of a new type of CRP, which varied the amount of functional surface area (FSA) available to the user and a control. The novel CRP theoretically can be ‘tuned’ by changing the FSA available, impacting the torque individuals are able to exert. All CRP treatments and the control resulted in significantly different removal torques between groups. The difference was largest when the available FSA was between 50% and 80%. Results suggest the new design has the potential to permit older adults to easily open containers while reducing access of children. This new cap system capitalized on a need to understand that a specific, limited region needs to be gripped for opening—and most children tended to just spin the outer cap without applying an isolated torque.