Urban Canopee uses pull-wound composite tubes made from circular and biobased materials to fight urban heat

Nature goes a long way towards lowering the temperature in urban areas. However, it’s not always possible to install a park in a city. Green infrastructure can be an interesting solution, but it can also be expensive, require a lot of materials and take a long time to install. Urban Canopee’s Corolle – an innovative plant canopy system – is a good option because its flared shape means it can support climbing plants. The Corolles are installed in public spaces to provide shade and coolness.

It sounds perfect, but it wasn’t easy to produce. In fact, at the start of its activity, Urban Canopee had to deal with supply difficulties on the part of its composite materials supplier. This limited the company’s production capacity, but ultimately had a positive outcome, as Elodie Grimoin, Managing Director and co-founder of Urban Canopee, explains: “This challenge also provided an opportunity to reassess our materials. We needed something stronger and more durable than simple pultruded rods for the structure of our canopies.”

Urban Canopee’s requirements for the material were: even greater strength, increased durability and reduced weight. In their search for the ideal material, they discovered Exel Composites, a company specialising in pull-wound composites.

“The brief from Urban Canopee necessitated a material that could provide the perfect balance of strength, flexibility, and lightweight properties for the company’s canopy systems,” explains Tiphaine Ricoup, area sales manager at Exel Composites. “Our pull-wound fibreglass composite tubes fit these requirements by employing cross-aligned fibres, ensuring resilience against hoop stress. This is the force exerted around the circumference of the tube when it is under stress. This feature makes our tubes ideal for various applications, including canopy systems.”

Composite tubes made from circular and biobased materials from Owens Corning pull-wound by Exel Composites

Urban Canopee decided to work with Exel Composites for the pull-winding process, and the composites used were Owens Corning’s SUSTAINA® Loop. This recently launched material is derived from pre-consumer glass fibre waste and combined with a bio-based resin. The continuous pull-winding process – which is Exel Composites’ specialty – enables high volume production with consistent quality while minimising material waste.

“SUSTAINA® Loop are designed to be a drop-in replacement for traditional materials,” explained Petra Inghelbrecht, sustainability leader of EU composites at Owens Corning. “They deliver the same mechanical performance as Type 30 fibres.”

“Incorporating Owens Corning’s fibres has allowed us to explore sustainable material options in demanding applications like Urban Canopee’s Corolle,” explained Kim Sjödahl, senior vice president of technology and sustainability at Exel Composites. “This pilot shows the potential of circular materials in real-world applications. The entire industry must embrace emission-reducing solutions to create a more sustainable future, and we are inviting other customers to follow Urban Canopee’s lead,” continued Sjödahl.

However, a specific challenge arose during the development of the tubes: they were generally straight, but the Urban Canopee use case required them to be curved. This is because the presence of curved structures in canopy systems improves structural rigidity and reduces deflection – the bending or warping of the canopy – which is a disadvantage of traditional flat sheet designs.

To meet these needs, Exel Composites had to refine the composition of its composite tubes and customise the resin system. The composite tubes had to be curved yet strong – to withstand high wind loads and other environmental stresses – flexible – while retaining their structural integrity – and lightweight – so that the structure could be moved easily.

Thanks to Exel Composites’ continuous manufacturing techniques, Urban Canopee was able to reduce its production lead times and therefore, to develop and deploy its canopy systems in hundreds of cities such as Bordeaux, Lyon or Toulouse.

“This pilot is a key step towards circularity in glass fibre composites. By recovering both our own and customer waste, we strive for a future with zero waste to landfill. This project is paving the way for a sustainable and circular composites industry,” Inghelbrecht stressed.

“This partnership is an important step in demonstrating to the industry that circular and bio-based materials perform as well as traditional materials. It highlights the advantages of transitioning to lower carbon products made possible by innovative circular solutions such as the SUSTAINA® Loop fibre,” concluded Sjödahl.

But the collaboration between Urban Canopee and Exel Composites is still in its early stages. The 2 companies are planning to manufacture translucent composite tubes that would allow the interior of structures to be lit.

Projects such as Urban Canopee’s are an excellent example of how the challenges of urbanisation and climate change are being successfully met through innovative green infrastructure and advanced materials.

You can visit Owens Corning’s booth at JEC World – booth 5H45 – in Paris from 4-6 March, and find out more about Exel Composites’ role in the development of Urban Canopee’s green canopies and how composites are paving the way for environmentally friendly infrastructure.

Cover photo: Urban Canopee