More info
Description / Abstract:
INTRODUCTION
The joint CIE Technical Committee (TC 4-45) and GTB (Brussels
Working Party on Vehicle Lighting) Front Lighting Working Group
activity was established in August 2005 as a continuation of the
GTB NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme) Taskforce that had been
working for two years with the objective of developing a headlight
performance rating system to be proposed to the European New Car
Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP). When Euro NCAP decided not to
continue to introduce a headlight rating system, the work
undertaken by GTB was transferred into the CIE structure with a
view to completing the study, publishing the conclusions and
establishing a technical standard.
During the GTB NCAP taskforce activity a total of 48
organisations from the GTB global national delegations had
contributed and 18 meetings had been held between August 2003 and
April 2005. A week-long testing event had taken place in Spain in
May 2005 with the successful validation of a number of the
performance parameters but further work was indicated with regard
to the algorithms for the assessment of range and glare.
The CIE TC 4-45 Technical Committee working in conjunction with
GTB continued to work on the refinement of the assessment of range
and glare. A second validation test event took place in Germany in
March 2006 and this contributed to a revised algorithm for the
calculation of passing beam and driving beam range. A test event to
concentrate on the validation of the glare assessment algorithms
took place in Belgium in February 2007 and a further event to
validate the range calculations took place in Italy in May
2007.
This report is the result of a requirement from car
manufacturers and headlighting manufacturers to develop a common
approach toward the performance assessment of vehicle lighting
systems. Although this has been a long-standing requirement, the
intentions to introduce procedures to publish the results of
headlighting system assessments (rating systems) by government
agencies in Europe, Japan and North America provided an incentive
for all the leading global manufacturers to work together to
develop an industry standard.
During the work to develop this report contributions have been
received from 52 manufacturers, institutions and testing services
providing a unique global representation. In total 33 meetings have
taken place with the discussions and conclusions being recorded in
reports and minutes of meetings archived for reference of all TC
members but no attempt has been made to include the detail in this
report. Although some references to published papers are included,
in general the report is the combination of the knowledge and
technical expertise of specialists in the field of automotive
lighting. The proposed standardised assessment method has been
validated by experiments and practical "on-road" assessments to
ensure that the results of any calculations are representative of
what a vehicle user will actually experience.