Design and Optimization of a Projector Headlamp

The process of designing a projector headlamp can be tedious and time consuming. Often, many design tradeoffs need to be considered. Illumination design software has been used for many years to analyze headlamp performance, but designing the reflectors and lenses is still a manual process. This paper discusses a projector headlamp designed for an H7 bulb that was created using an automatic optimization routine in commercially available illumination design software.

The paper describes how to create and validate the source model for an H7 bulb. It also describes the optimizations that were performed on the lens and the reflector. The lens was designed using one optimization that produced the best focus at a specific focal length. The reflector was designed in several steps and optimizations. The end result is a design that meets FMVSS 108 requirements for a VOR headlamp. Justifications are provided for design assumptions and lessons learned are discussed.