Research on an on-line wear condition monitoring system for marine diesel engine

This paper introduces a kind of on-line wear condition monitoring system for marine diesel engines. The system consists of three functions i.e. particle detecting, lubricant quality detecting and shaft torque moment and instantaneous rotation velocity detecting. The system detects wear particles in lubricant with an on-line ferrograph so as to judge wear condition of tribe-pairs of the diesel engine. A vertical detector fixed is used for environment of the marine diesel engine in this system, and the rule of distribution of particles in the vertical detector fixed and the horizontal detector fixed are alike in substance. The system detects the relative variation of lubricant quality by the grid capacitance sensors in an on-line way, which consists of an upper capacitance and a lower capacitance and can distinguish the relative variation of the dielectric constant of lubricant caused by pollutants such as water, metal particles etc. The system detects the shaft torque moment and the instantaneous rotation velocity of the diesel engine with photoelectric sensors, and corresponds the wear condition with the power condition by the change of instantaneous rotation velocity due to burning pressure change, which is helpful to judge cylinder wear. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.