Performance Requirements for SAE J1383 Motor Vehicle Headlights

Developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the SAE J1383 standard is designed as a guide to standard practice and is subject to change from time to time to keep up with experience and technical developments. This standard contains performance requirements, material requirements, design requirements and design guidelines for 12 Volt headlights.

For the purposes of this standard,

• Headlight refers to a lighting device that provides an upper or lower beam used to illuminate the vehicle ahead.
• A sealed headlight refers to an integrated and indivisible optical assembly that includes the light source and the scaled beam molded in the lens.
• A replaceable bulb headlight refers to a divisible optical assembly in which the light source and other parts can be replaced.
• A sub headlight refers to a beam that aims to illuminate the road ahead of the vehicle and its surroundings when another vehicle is encountered or closely followed.
• A mechanically steerable headlight refers to a headlight that creates an aiming plane used for laboratory photometric testing and, when fitted to a vehicle, to adjust and inspect the headlight for its intended purpose.
• Aiming plane refers to a plane defined by the surface of the three aiming pads on the lens.
• The headlight mechanical axis refers to the line formed by the intersection of a horizontal and vertical plane passing through a light source parallel to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle.
• Design voltage refers to the voltage used for design purposes.
• Test voltage refers to the specified voltage and tolerance to be used when testing.
• Rated voltage refers to the rated circuit or vehicle electrical system voltage classification.

The test methods defined in the framework of the SAE J1383 standard are:

• Vibration test
• dust test
• Corrosion test
• Photometry test
• Color test
• Plastic material testing
• Beam model position test
• Photometric performance test
• Filament life test
• watt test
• Light intensity preservation test
• out-of-focus test
• Impact test
• Lens inward force test
• Chemical resistance test
• Abrasion test of plastic headlight lens material
• thermal cycling test
• Thermal shock test
• Internal heat test
• Moisture test

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