During the university year 2019-2020, this course is a 58h module, uniformely dispatched on the January and mid-February 2020 sequence


The ability to ‘design’ is the specific power and aim of the engineering education. It requests to marshal previously learned scientific knowledge to invent efficient and skillful answers to problems. This course deals with this generic issue in the context of optical systems design. Teaching will include two main topics:
Rough outline of optical systems. The goal is to train students to deal with the pre-design stage of an optical system construction. Case studies will show how to ask themselves the right questions to build in a few hours the draft of an optical system pilot study, starting from the end-user need description, which is usually informal and sometimes incomplete. Some methodological tools will be set out to deal with right orders of magnitude of relevant problem parameters. The requested skills are, in some way, similar to the one of the draftsman or draftswoman that gives birth to an architecture project with a few pencil strokes on his/her sketchbook.
Optical System Design with the CodeV® software from SYNOPSYS Corporation (formerly Optical Research Associates). The aim is to lead students to be able to perform with this well renowned software the detailed design of realistic imaging optical systems of middle complexity.
Association of both skills. The goal is to learn to go from the informal end-user need description to the detailed setup of a functional, limited cost and complexity optical system, through the former two steps.

The course is essentially built upon 3 hours sequences of mixed lectures and hands-on tutorials in the computer facility of the school. The two main topics are taught in parallel in the first weeks and are, then, combined in the last ones.

Rough outline of optical systems. (~12h)
• Example of how to determine the size of an infrared imaging optical system
• Some real-life examples of end-user optical design queries
• Case studies.

Optical System Design with the CodeV® software. (~24h)
• Setting up a lens system (refractive and reflective surfaces, aspherical surfaces, obscuration, tilts and decenters, ...)
• Optical quality analyses (transverse ray aberration curves, spot-diagrams, MTF, ...)
• Lens optimization (with standard or more complex user-defined constraints)
• Use of multi-configuration (zoomed) systems
• Introduction to thermal IR optical system design
• Introduction to optical system tolerancing, analyses of the effect of temperature and pressure changes and stray light suppression.
• Optical design examples (Newtonian reflective telescope, eyepiece with pupil conjugation and pupil aberration control, Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope with internal focusing, Achromat doublet for thermal IR, Three Mirrors Anastigmats telescope, ...)

+ Erasmus⁺ lecture on “Optical Manufacturing” (~9h)
• Glass manufacturing
• Glass element manufacturing (including an introduction to ISO 10110 standard drawings)


Association of both skills. (~9h)
• Case studies.

Requirements : General knowledge in geometrical optics, visible and thermal IR radiometry, optical aberrations and optical systems design (as given, for example, by first and second year teachings in the engineering curriculum of IOGS).

Evaluation mechanism : Continuous assessment

Last Modification : Saturday 18 January 2020