Finding the lubrication oil properties of an internal combustion engine using a capacitive sensor

Abstract

The main agenda of this paper is to find the IC engine lubricant properties using a capacitive sensor since in the recent times, investigation on lubricant oil properties that affects the oil life time, has become an area of paramount importance, for many scholars. Liters of lubricating oil present in the engines could be prevented from getting discarded before it attains its useful life, by predicting its life time through its degradation properties. Hence, the different sets of oil samples was tested using a capacitive sensor, to determine the extent to which, these oil degradation properties influence the respective oil life time of the testing samples. It was observed that the variations in the dielectric constant values of the lubricating oil with respect to different pollutants present, was reflected as a varying output voltage from the capacitive sensor. These variations in the output voltage of the capacitive sensor were then recorded and was compared with the results, of similar properties of oil tested, attained using ASTM (American Society of Testing and Materials)methods. These observations made from the comparisons of the test results attained from both the capacitive sensor and the ASTM test methods in the laboratory was eventually co related with the lubricant oil properties such as Total Acid Number (TAN), Total Base Number (TBN), and kinematic viscosity to determine the lifetime of the oil sample.