Design and analysis of a high-intensity LED lighting module for underwater illumination

Abstract

Replacing traditional light sources with light-emitting diode (LED) light modules is a global trend, especially for underwater illumination. The light intensity is dispersed evenly at all emission angles in traditional underwater light sources that use the radiative transfer model, resulting in the inclusion of scattering factors in the attenuation coefficient. The high directionality of LED light source modules causes the light intensity transfer in water to vary according to varying emission angles. This renders traditional underwater optical transfer theory irrelevant as an underwater LED light module design reference. Therefore, this study constructs an underwater LED light source transfer model using the light-field average cosine and the light transfer scattering probability method, and imports the LED luminous intensity distribution curve (LIDC) and axial luminous intensity. Experimental results showed that the illumination intensity of the underwater LED illumination module was less than 10% of the simulation. Therefore, this design method can be used to design the required illumination light modules for different underwater environments. Finally, the LED light module has been used for under water fish attractor lighting and enhanced the illumination zone efficiency (m3 per Watt) of 81% compared to the traditional high intensity discharge (HID) underwater fish attractor lamp.