Application of rotational accelerometers on the measurement of automotive headlamp cut-off deviation

Automotive lighting products, such as Head Lamps (HL), Fog Lamps (FL), Daytime Running Lamps (DRL), face with mechanical vibrations during service life which may coincide with the resonance frequencies of the light source. When excited at resonance frequencies, especially in the case of HL’s, light beam cut-offline may deteriorate and vibration of light beam occurs. This situation is also called light flickering. This state has disturbing effect on the driver’s visibility, which is valid for both the driver and the counter drivers. Most of the automotive manufacturers have developed test specifications for evaluation of flickering state under sinusoidal frequency sweep acceleration loading and they have introduced limits for flickering angle range or displacement range of the light beam with respect to frequency measured on a screen which is put on a prescribed distance from the light source. In this study a traditional way of light beam flickering angle deviation measurement method of HL is presented. Furthermore, application of precise & efficient way of measurement method by the use of quartz rotational accelerometer is inspected.