ANALYSIS AND INVESTIGATION OF DIESEL ENGINE VIBRATION SIGNAL

Diesel engine is a very critical equipment because its failure has high
consequence on cost. Time domain, frequency domain, spectrum of
diesel engine vibration and the total value of the vibration amplitude are
methods applied to the engine body vibration to extract the useful
information and thus determine the condition of the diesel engine under
different speeds and loads.

Figure below shows the engine vibration in the time domain with the
cylinder pressure recorded at 1000rpm speed and 0Nm load; this is
mainly to determine the vibration waveform peak corresponding to
cylinder.

Engine vibration waveform with in-cylinder pressure

Time domain method is useful for reciprocating machines(Forward and
backward movement in a straight line) such as diesel engine because it
shows particular timing events such as the firing order. But it cannot
provide any good condition monitoring information. Therefore
frequency domain method is used.

SPECTRUM OF DIESEL ENGINE VIBRATION SIGNAL

Frequency spectrum analysis was conducted on the vibration data

collected under four operational load conditions of 0 and 60Nm. The
engine was operated at a constant speed of 1000rpm and we change the
exhaust valve clearance from 0.4mm (healthy condition) to 0.0mm
(faulty condition). Figures show vibration signals in the frequency
domain for healthy and faulty condition. In the figure below we can see
the firing frequency (33.3Hz) is indicated as (F) and the first harmonic
(66.6Hz) and the second harmonic (99.9Hz) are indicated as (2F) and
(3F) respectively.
Vibration signal in frequency domain for the healthy valve

Vibration signal in the frequency domain for the faulty valve

Vibration signal in the frequency domain for the healthy valve
Vibration signal in the frequency domain for the faulty valve
THE VIBRATION AMPLITUDE OF THE DIESEL ENGINE

Amplitude tells us the severity of the vibration and amplitude is equal to

the height of the cycle. The time domain technique to extract the
information from the vibration signal is used to determine the condition
of the diesel engine at different speeds and loads. The time domain was
used to represent the vibration signal by plotting the amplitude to relate
it to the engine events.

VIBRATION TESTING INSTRUMENT AND TEST METHODS OF DIESEL

ENGINE

Vibration testing is the ability to replicate vibration that occurs in the

real world to your product and or diesel engine in order to witness the
effects and identify weakness. The following are some of the test
methods used;

 Determination of engine type

 Helps in parameters and measuring selection

 Vibration signal detection

 Save data file