Portable Solar Tent Wins 2025 ASC Sustainable Composite Design Competition

By Navid Zobeiry, Communications Editor, American Society for Composites, Last updated: August 28, 2025

The American Society for Composites is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Sustainable Composite Design Competition: Team Sun on Shoulders (SOS) for their project, A Lightweight, Sustainable Solar Energy Solution for Post-Disaster Areas.

The winning concept is a portable solar tent that combines a lightweight frame made from flax-fiber–reinforced recycled polypropylene with flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) panels. The design targets the competition’s performance constraints—a ≥ 400 W daily average output, ≥ 100 days of operation, and a total mass of ≤ 20 kg—while aiming to reduce embodied energy, material use, and greenhouse-gas emissions relative to traditional silicon panels on metal frames.

Winning Team:

• Pietra de Castilhos Lagranha, Augusto Bisio de Souza, Marcos Eduardo Tonello, Fabrício Guterres Carneiro
  Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
• Tales Vargas de Lisboa, Eduardo Antônio Wink de Menezes
  Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e. V., Germany

Recognition: The team will receive a certificate and a $1,000 prize at the 40th ASC Technical Conference in Dayton, Ohio, on October 7, 2025, during the conference banquet.

2025 Competition Brief (summary):

• Challenge: Design a renewable power generation system (RPGS) using recycled/reused/repurposed composites for remote use after disasters (fires, floods, migration, civil unrest, or war).
• Evaluation:
  • Design & performance (30%)—Specify geometries, materials, manufacturing, and performance to meet ≥ 400 W daily average output, ≥ 100 days of operation, and ≤ 20 kg mass.
  • Circularity (20%)—Demonstrate cradle-to-cradle sustainability: feedstock sources, manufacturing approach, and end-of-life reuse/repurpose.
  • Carbon footprint (30%)—Provide quantitative life-cycle estimates across materials, manufacturing, use, and end-of-use.
  • Scale & economics (20%)—Address worldwide deployment feasibility with production-volume cost estimates.

Judges: Frazer Barnes (Gen-2 Composites), Pete George (Boeing), Ichiro Kitano (Teijin), Jonathan Meagan (Solvay), Tia Benson Tolle (Boeing)

Organizers: Ozden Ochoa (Texas A&M), Kishore Pochiraju (Stevens Institute of Technology), Michael Bozlar (UT Arlington), Thomas Whitney (University of Dayton), Samit Roy (University of Alabama)

Learn more about the Sustainable Composite Design Competition »

Congratulations to Team Sun on Shoulders (SOS) on this achievement and for advancing sustainable composite design for real-world impact.