A method for transfer of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results to the optical design program CODE V¹ has been developed, although the method can be readily adapted to other optical design codes that support Zernike surfaces. This method is an improvement in many ways over the methods used in commercial codes written to perform this data transfer. The method assumes the surface nodal displacements are purely in the direction of the sag (z-axis) at the radial location of the displaced node point. This eliminates the approximations necessary when transferring the deformations as pseudo-interferograms, and eliminates the approximations made in the ray tracing of interferograms. Special techniques have been included to remove the inaccuracies introduced in the FEA program. The method has been validated on a series of test cases.

Date Published: 6 November 2003
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 5174, Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization VI, (6 November 2003);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5174:
Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization VI
Jose M. Sasian; R. John Koshel; Paul K. Manhart, Editor(s)