Investigation on light intensity and temperature distribution of Automotive's Halogen and LED headlight

Abstract

The improved benefits of the general light emitting diode (LED) attracts the automotive lighting industry and as a result many of the higher end cars today are fitted with LED headlight in place of halogen and xenon bulb based headlights. The advantages include higher operating efficiency, compactness and improved bulb life. In this research, a comparison between the halogen and LED based headlight systems was carried out by focusing on their temperature distributions and light intensity illumination. For this purpose, headlights of SUMO Victa, a Multi Utility Vehicle (MUV) from TATA Motors is used. A LED bulb assembly was fabricated using SMD LEDs which was retrofitted into the Victa headlamps by replacing the original halogen bulb. To dissipate the heat produced by LED, a heatsink fabricated from copper sheet and fitted with copper powder was used. LED bulbs are fitted around the heatsink to effectively remove the heat generated during LED operation and control the junction temperature. To evaluate the performance of the fabricated SMD LED bulb and halogen bulb, experiments were carried out to capture the temperature distribution on bulb, inner and outer surface of headlight along with light intensity. The results clearly show that the LED bulb achieves higher light intensity, less power consumption and temperature distribution than a halogen bulb.