Research on the Characteristics of Operating Non-Uniformity of a High-Pressure Common-Rail Diesel Engine Based on Crankshaft Segment Signals

This paper studies the operating uniformity of a high-pressure common-rail diesel engine based on crankshaft segment signals. Engine nonuniformity or unevenness refers to the crankshaft torque fluctuation caused by cylinder-to-cylinder differences, which are caused by misfiring or difference in fuel supply or air supply. The experiments were conducted on a diesel engine of the YN30CR model. Based on the relationships among the cylinder pressure, the instantaneous crankshaft angular speed, and the crankshaft segment signal, it is found that the crankshaft segment signal can be used to characterize the operating nonuniformity of the diesel engine. Based on the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) from the angular domain to the frequency domain in analyzing the fluctuation patterns of the crankshaft segment signals at different operating conditions, the nonuniformity information was extracted. In order to further reveal the relationship between the fluctuation phenomena of the crankshaft segment signal and the cause of the fluctuation, the torque acting on the crankshaft of the multi-cylinder diesel engine was studied to quantify the operating nonuniformity of the diesel engine. The results show that the crankshaft segment signal can reflect the uniformity of the engine torque very well in both phase and amplitude, and the degree of nonuniformity of the engine torque can be reflected by the amplitudes of the low-order non-dominant harmonics of the crankshaft segment signal below the firing frequency. The crankshaft segment signal is very consistent with the variation pattern of the engine torque.