Diesel Engine Combustion Monitoring Based on Acoustic Measurement of Exhaust Systems

This paper presents a novel monitoring approach to diesel engine combustion based on acoustic measurement of exhaust systems. It investigates the acoustic characteristics from the measurements of individual sensors and their combination based on a linear one port acoustic source model. It has been found that the strength, in terms of pressure, of the acoustic source gives a more accurate representation of engine acoustics because it is obtained by minimizing the reflection effects in the exhaust system. Therefore, the pressure waveform produces more accurate monitoring results for abnormal combustions such as those caused by faults in engine fuel injection systems.