Combustion monitoring in engines using accelerometer signals

Abstract

Recent regulations for emission control from combustion engines have led to focus on various methods to monitor control and the combustion process. The presented work explores the potential relationship between various combustion events monitored using in-cylinder pressure transducer and the resulting block vibration measured using accelerometers. Various features of combustion development process were derived from the vibration data acquired. The methodology was analyzed using a single cylinder diesel engine. The heat release data was able to detect and extracted various indicators of the combustion process like start of combustion and half of injected fuel positions. Higher correlation was observed for the data computed using heat release curve obtained from the in-cylinder pressure measurements and those obtained using the accelerometer signals. The proposed methodology can be used to optimize the fuel injection timing in order to reduce emissions from engines to comply with various regulations. The practical importance of presented work demonstrates use of monitoring of block vibration signals as a mean of non-intrusive methods of diagnosis of engine for its effective condition monitoring.