Generalized nonimaging compound elliptical and compound hyperbolic luminaire designs for pair-overlap illumination

Generalized nonimaging Compound Elliptical Luminaires (CELs) and Compound Hyperbolic Luminaires (CHLs) are developed for pair-overlap illumination applications. A comprehensive analysis of CELs and CHLs is presented. This includes the possibility of reflector truncation, as well as the extreme direction spanning the full range from positive to negative. Negative extreme direction devices have been overlooked in earlier studies, and are shown to be well suited to illumination problems where large cutoff angles are required. Flux maps can be calculated analytically without the need for computer ray tracing. It is demonstrated that, for a broad range of cutoff angles, adjacent pairs of CELs and CHLs can generate highly uniform far-field illuminance, while maintaining maximal lighting efficiency and excellent glare control. The tradeoff between luminaire compactness and flux homogeneity is also illustrated. For V-troughs, being a special case of CHLs and being well suited to simple, inexpensive fabrication, we identify geometries that closely approach the performance characteristics of the optimized CELs and CHLs.