Lens design using a minimum number of glasses.

Abstract

Currently, there are hundreds of optical glasses available from glass manufacturers. Due to increasing environmental limitations on the use of certain raw materials used to make these glasses, there is now an economic desire to minimize the number of glasses used in lens design. This dissertation presents the results of a study to create a suggested universal catalogue that contains the minimum number of glasses needed to satisfy most possible lens designs. Three different lens libraries were studied using the global optimization method and the most frequently chosen glasses were then compiled into the suggested universal glass catalogue. Two highly different systems, a nearly symmetric double Gauss lens, and a highly asymmetric eyepiece are used in the glass selection process. As part of this study, the relationship between the error function and the number of glasses chosen is studied, and in addition, a glass range study is also carried out. A suggested universal glass catalogue constructed from this study that contains nine glasses is presented.