Modelling and simulation have been establishing its position in the paper industry as a vital approach in solving problems, particularly outstanding and new difficult problems in process development and product development. However, it is also true that there is still deep skepticism of the effectiveness and usefulness of the approach, as compared with the traditional experimental/trial approach.
This paper describes an aspect of the state of the art in this area by taking three examples of the modelling and simulation studies conducted in the author's laboratory. These examples are (1) particle level simulation of paper structure development in forming section of papermaking, (2) the investigation of basic mechanisms of wrinkling and fluting of paper web in heatset, web-fed offset printing processes, and (3) the causes of stripe patterns in flexo printing of corrugated board. The above problems are all outstanding in the industry and the ones for which the traditional approach could not provide the answers. The paper is concluded by emphasising the complementary roles of the modelling/simulation and experiment/trial approaches in the future problem solving.