Segmented Light Pipes for Automotive Striped Aesthetics
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional automotive lighting designs struggle to achieve complex aesthetics like striped patterns due to lighting inefficiencies and heterogeneities in light intensity, especially when using thick light guides, which impact visual perception and aesthetics.
Innovation Solution
The use of light pipes with a series of decoupling regions and reflecting facets that control internal reflections to achieve homogenous lighting and precise light distribution, allowing for the creation of complex lighting features with improved efficiency and fidelity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Shape
If thick light guides are used to achieve complex aesthetic patterns, then geometric flexibility and aesthetic complexity are improved, but light intensity homogeneity and lighting efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The light guide is segmented into multiple discrete light pipes arranged in arrays, with each light pipe containing multiple decoupling regions. This segmentation allows independent control of light distribution along each pipe, enabling complex aesthetic patterns while maintaining homogeneous light intensity through controlled decoupling at specific regions.
Solution Approach 2:
Different regions of the light guide are assigned different optical properties through decoupling regions with varying reflectivity, transparency, and geometry. This local differentiation enables complex aesthetic patterns in specific areas while maintaining homogeneous lighting in other regions, resolving the contradiction between aesthetic complexity and light uniformity.
2Shape
If traditional lighting implementations are used to create patterned aesthetics, then aesthetic complexity is improved, but lighting efficiency and user perception acuity deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
Traditional mechanical lighting implementations are replaced with optical field-based light pipes that use internal reflections and decoupling regions to create aesthetic patterns. This substitution eliminates the need for complex mechanical arrangements while improving lighting efficiency and maintaining aesthetic complexity through optical control mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The optical parameters of the light guide are changed by introducing decoupling regions with specific reflectivity, transparency, and geometric properties. These parameter changes enable efficient light distribution while creating complex aesthetic patterns, improving both lighting efficiency and aesthetic complexity simultaneously.
3Illumination intensity
If multiple decoupling regions are introduced to control light distribution, then light intensity homogeneity and lighting efficiency are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple decoupling regions are merged into a single integrated light pipe structure, where each region performs specific light distribution functions. This merging reduces overall device complexity compared to using separate components, while maintaining light intensity homogeneity through the coordinated action of multiple decoupling regions within the unified light pipe array.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach enables the production of complex, aesthetically pleasing lighting features with consistent light intensity and reduced inefficiencies, effectively addressing the limitations of traditional designs by enhancing control over internal reflections and light distribution.
Implementation Method 1
one or more light guides optically-coupled to the at least one light source and configured to guide a light emitted from the at least one light source along a light guiding direction
Implementation Method 2
reflecting, via one of a plurality of decoupling regions, the light emitted from the at least one light source, and projecting, via the one of the plurality of decoupling regions, the reflected light to an output face
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure relates to a light pipe arrangement for complex automotive lighting features. The light pipe arrangement includes proximately aligned light pipes comprising at least one grouping of reflecting facets for creating a striped aesthetic.