Fault Detection of Inline Reciprocating Diesel Engine: A Mass and Gas-Torque Approach

Early fault detection and diagnosis for medium-speed diesel engines are important to ensure reliable operation throughout the course of their service. This work presents an investigation of the diesel engine combustion-related fault detection capability of crankshaft torsional vibrations. Proposed methodology state the way of early fault detection in the operating six-cylinder diesel engine. The model of six cylinders DI Diesel engine is developed appropriately. As per the earlier work by the same author the torsional vibration amplitudes are used to superimpose the mass and gas torque. Further mass and gas torque analysis is used to detect fault in the operating engine. The DFT of the measured crankshaft’s speed, under steady-state operating conditions at constant load shows significant variation of the amplitude of the lowest major harmonic order. This is valid both for uniform operating and faulty conditions and the lowest harmonic orders may be used to correlate its amplitude to the gas pressure torque and mass torque for a given engine. The amplitudes of the lowest harmonic orders (0.5, 1, and 1.5) of the gas pressure torque and mass torque are used to map the fault. A method capable to detect faulty cylinder of operating Kirloskar diesel engine of SL90 Engine-SL8800TA type is developed, based on the phases of the lowest three harmonic orders.