IPNaCompTube Democase introduction

Read the short story of the IPNaCompTube Democase lead by Décathlon that was selected through the OASIS Open Call:

Décathlon S.A. is a French sporting goods retailer and designer. With over 1647 stores in nearly 1000 cities in 57 countries and regions, it is the largest sporting goods retailer in the world. Its annual turnover (TO) is 12.4 Billion Euros, with a growth of +9.1% in 2018. The 102 000 employees have for first mission to satisfy our 400 million customers with 85 sports. 67% of the employees are based in Europe, 24% in Asia.

Sport products continually search to improve their mechanical characteristics in order to be more and more efficient. The ratios between perceived quality and production cost are constantly evolving. But, now, the environmental impact of products is beginning to be the first priority on the product development. Décathlon is working actively to reduce this impact by studying various technical solutions and by evaluating them by the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method. The IPNaCompTube project aims to assess the impact of nano charged materials on the tubular composite shape of a badminton racket. The technical challenge is to qualify and quantify the advantages provided by the nano-technology, data which can be used by Décathlon to calculate the LCA of the racket. At least three kinds of advantage could be studied; a nano particle charged epoxy resin is stiffer, is more resilient and could be cured at a lower temperature. It seems that these three pillars of the LCA had never been studied together during the same study for a sport good.

The potential benefits would be to demonstrate in practice the advantages of the nanotechnology for the Sustainability, to allow Décathlon to achieve its commitments for the CO2 emission reduction for composite products and to be unique composite sport good designer to claim it.

The IPNaCompTube case is using the combined services of Adamant Composites, IPC, UCLM, University of Patras, TMBK and CEA.