Advances in Flowline simulations

摘要

Nonimaging optics is focused on the study of techniques to design optical systems for thepurpose of energy transfer instead of image forming. The flowline optical design method, based onthe definition of the geometrical flux vector J, is one of these techniques. The main advantage offlowline method is its capability to visualize and estimate how radiant energy is transferred by theoptical systems using the concepts of vector field theory, like field line or flux tube, whichovercomes traditional raytrace methods. The main objective this paper is to extend the flowlinemethod to analyze and design real 3D concentration and illumination systems by the developmentof new simulation techniques. In this paper we will analyzed real 3D refractive and reflectivesystems using flowline vector potential method. A new constant term of Optical Path Length hasbeen introduced, similar and comparable to the gauge invariant, which produces a correction toenable the agreement between raytrace and flowline based computations. Finally an introduction toFlowline computations for non-Lambertian sources has been carry out. This new optical simulationmethodology provides traditional raytrace results, like irradiance maps, but opens new perspectivesto obtaining higher precision, lower computation time.