Expertise of Hair Care Products Evaluation by SP Equation

5 January 2022

SP Equation, a specialist in in vitro instrumental evaluation in the field of hair, offers its customers personalized tests that match with their needs and claims, especially for Hair Care products. Maintenance of the shine provided by dyeing products, protection of hair from the harmful effects of ultraviolet, repair of degradations provided by dyeing products, …. are all claims that SP Equation can help its customers support.

With more than 25 years of experience in the field of hair and instrumental evaluation, SP Equation supports its customers in highlighting their actives or formulas, selecting the type of hair best suited to the tests to be performed, and evaluating the performance of products using modern techniques, easily exploitable and recognized:

Brightness & Color Evaluation

Evaluation of the brightness of hair-on-hair strands thanks to the Samba Hair which uses polarized light to obtain two images of the wick: a specular image and a diffuse image, and thus make it possible to calculate a brightness index (called Luster BNT).
Protection of the color to successive washes provided by Hair Care products (shampoos / conditioners / masks or coupling of products). This evaluation is carried out by measuring the color of colored strands before and after successive treatments thanks to a spectrocolorimeter adapted to hair strands.
UV color This evaluation is implmented by measuring the color of colored strands before and after irradiation thanks to an Alpha Xenotest. A system allowing to alternate insolation and water spraying can also allow the protection of the color against weather (sun / rain).

Objectivation of the Mechanical Properties of Hair

Straightening effect – or volume input, anti-frizz effect of hair products – with the help of This equipment allows, thanks to a camera, to take pictures of a strand of hair that rotates on itself in front of a light background, then to convert them into grayscale. It analyzes them by thresholding to differentiate the body of the strands and frizz
Evaluation of the mechanical properties of hair (Young’s modulus, Extension to breakage, Stress to break) thanks to the Micro-Tensile Tester MTT675 extensometer coupled to the FDAS (Fibre Dimensional Analysis System). This technique evaluates the impact of hair treatments on the mechanical characteristics of the treated fibers. It makes it possible to evaluate the thermal protection provided by hair products or equipment such as straightening irons.
Resistance to bending and abrasion of hair treated with different hair products and after an overlay of treatments. This characterization is done using the Fibrestress, equipment intended for the textile industry, whose technology has been adapted to the hair.
Protection of fibers from the harmful effects of UV. This technique enables the characterization of the photoprotection of hair provided by a hair product using the Alpha Xenotest for hair insolation. The Micro-Tensile Tester MTT675 extensometer evaluates the evolution of the Young’s module, characteristic of the degradations observed.

Combing Quantification

Combing breakage test. This evaluation technique determines the number of broken hair after a significant number of combing thanks to the Sirtaki. It allows to characterize the ability of a treatment to limit hair breakage to combing
The evaluation of the ease of combing (or combingability) provided by hair treatments is done on wet hair, it characterizes the “combing force” of strands of hair before and after treatment. This technique uses the Micro-Tensile Tester MTT175 extensometer.

SP Equation, concerned about the satisfaction of its customers, adapts all these protocols to the specific needs of its customers and continues its research to offer ever more innovative tests!

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