Abstract
A study is presented of improved road light design for drivers and pedestrians with the use of a ray- or reverse ray-tracing method. Many existing road lights are unsuitable for drivers and pedestrians because of serious problems such as glare effect or randomicity of illuminated areas. This situation has arisen because in customary design methods the emphasis has been on simple factors such as luminance or electrical power. However a high luminance or electrical power consumption, alone, do not guarantee bright and good road lighting. So we have applied a ray-tracing method to the design of a road light reflector with the goals of ensuring that illuminated objects on the road can be seen more clearly and that the illuminating light is more comfortable for the eyes of drivers and pedestrians. We have set design targets for factors such as the uniformity of lighting on the road area per road light, the shading angles and the continuous luminance uniformity on long lengths of road. For set heights of the eyes of drivers and pedestrians eyes we have calculated a design guideline for the achievement of the above design targets. Then we designed a road light reflector using the reverse ray-tracing approach. Also we have achieved the same luminance on the road with almost half the power consumption, through the reduction of lighty loss. In an ideal design optimum parameters are suggested to be a shading angle of 75 degrees and a luminance uniformity of 0.5 on the road area. This reflector performance is achievable with a 250 watt power consumption ceramic discharge metal light source.
