Designing a solar chamber
Designing a solar chamber
(OP)
I need to design a solar testing chamber that my client is basing on MIL-STD-810F, where they prescribe a range of illuminance from 55 to 1140W/m^2,delivered to three different sides of a 4' cube.
Using the conversion formula of 683 x 1140W/m^2 would give us a delivered amount of 778,620 lux, or roughly 77,800 foot-candles, per side of the cube. This would be roughly seven times the level of natural sunlight on a cloudless day, which is approximately 10,000 fc. Is this conversion and requirement correct, or is my customer looking for too high a level of illumination?
I can't figure out how I can fit enough luminaires around a 4' cube object to deliver that much light, in the required spectral mix of HPS and MV. Any ideas, or experience with these testing chambers to offer? Thanks in advance.
Mike Noon LC
Palindrome Lighting Design, Inc.
Using the conversion formula of 683 x 1140W/m^2 would give us a delivered amount of 778,620 lux, or roughly 77,800 foot-candles, per side of the cube. This would be roughly seven times the level of natural sunlight on a cloudless day, which is approximately 10,000 fc. Is this conversion and requirement correct, or is my customer looking for too high a level of illumination?
I can't figure out how I can fit enough luminaires around a 4' cube object to deliver that much light, in the required spectral mix of HPS and MV. Any ideas, or experience with these testing chambers to offer? Thanks in advance.
Mike Noon LC
Palindrome Lighting Design, Inc.





RE: Designing a solar chamber
1150 W/m<sup>2</sup> relates to TOTAL solar irradiance, which every wavelength from 0 to infinity, based on Planck's blackbody radiation function.
The cheesy solution is to simply scale the 1150 W/m<sup>2</sup> to 100,000 lux, and ratio the 55 W/m<sup>2</sup> accordingly
TTFN
RE: Designing a solar chamber
Thanks,
Mike
RE: Designing a solar chamber
As I was indicating last night, the 100,000 lux would be equivalent to the 1140 W/m^2, although it would need to be supplied from 5900K color temp sources to be correct.
TTFN
RE: Designing a solar chamber
Mike