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The built-in space available for a headlamp in motor vehicles has been steadily reduced by vehicle manufacturers over the last few years. In order to continue to provide the driver with the necessary safety equipment, new headlamp designs with improved efficiency are necessary. One such new design, the reflector with variable focus (VF Reflector), is presented in this paper. The mathematical concept of VF reflectors is explained and the advantages in lighting technique over conventional reflector systems are illustrated by means of concrete examples.

This report gives an overview of the current status of developments intended to improve the low beam of motor vehicle headlamp systems by use of segmented reflectors. In addition to advantages in terms of lighting technique (gain in luminous flux, increasing safety for the driver as a result of improved lateral illumination level and foreground brightness), the segmented reflector also accommodates the stylistic wishes of the automobile manufacturers (smaller overall height, larger angle of inclination of the lens), and thus represents a genuine alternative to the Polyellipsoid headlamp (PES) for the future. The advantages will be explained and quantified using concrete examples.

In the last years, motor vehicle lighting systems were required to be more efficient, to have shorter development times and to be of higher quality. One important tool used in complying with these demands is the computer calculation of the optical characteristics of the complete headlamp system. A newly developed software package is presented in this paper which permits the configuration of a headlamp in its basic optical components and the quantitative calculation of its light distribution, luminous flux and other optical quantities. It is now possible for the first time, to assess a headlamp's total light pattern in advance, without hardware (e.g. model headlamps etc.) being required. The simulation results show a high degree of concurrence between the computed and the measured light distributions. This will be demonstrated in detail using concrete examples.