Suitability of DIALux for designing UVC disinfection cabins.

ABSTRACT

During the present Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, there has been an increase in the development of UVC disinfection systems. Researchers and members of the lighting community shifted their interests to this new field to help develop systems for disinfecting facemasks and other small equipment. In this paper we show that it is possible to use DIALux to simulate the irradiance distribution provided by a lamp emitting in the UVC range. We will compare the results provided by DIALux with those obtained from Zemax OpticStudio in three different scenarios. We compared the minimum, maximum, and mean irradiance at the detection plane. The differences between the two software were less than 12%, 2%, and 6%, respectively. We also compared the contour maps of isoirradiance lines. We conclude that DIALux is well suited for UVC lighting design in the UVC range. We think that this finding will contribute to increasing the design and manufacturing of new UVC disinfection systems needed to fight against the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic.