Innovative light collimator with afocal lens and total internal reflection lens for daylighting system

Appl Opt. 2015 Oct 1;54(28):E165-70. doi: 10.1364/AO.54.00E165.

Abstract

This research presents a novel design of the collimator, which uses total internal reflection (TIR), convex, and concave lenses for the natural light illumination system (NLIS). The concept of the NLIS is to illuminate building interiors with natural light, which saves energy consumption. The TIR lens is used to collimate the light, and convex and concave lenses are used to converge the light to the required area. The results have shown that the efficiency in terms of achieving collimated light using the proposed collimator at the output of the light collector is better than that of a previous system without a collimator.