Designing optical devices based on non-uniform rational Béziers splines

Algorithms and equations to evaluate optical performance by ray tracing are lined out. A parameterization scheme is given that reduces the degrees of freedom to a level suitable for automatic processing. To prove feasibility, a secondary reflector based on a NURBS surface and a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) are designed for a specific test application and compared to each other. It is found that the suggested design method is feasible on contemporary personal computers and that the NURBS based surface performs well compared to the CPC.