Prediction of engine component loads using previous measurements

Sammanfattning: Internal combustion engines are used in many applications. The same engine type may have different components mounted to it depending upon its use. These engine mounted components need to be designed against fatigue in order to withstand the engine vibrations. Measured engine vibrations are commonly used as input data for fatigue estimation. The focus in this thesis is set on heavy-duty diesel engines, typically used in trucks, buses and industrial applications. All of the appended papers use engine vibration measurements to evaluate the proposed methods.In Paper A, the engine block motion is described with a seven degree of freedom kinematic model. These degrees of freedom consist of six rigid body modes and one assumed twisting degree of freedom. With this description, measured engine block vibrations can be used to accurately predict the vibration in positions that have not been measured. Relating the measured vibrations of an engine mounted component with the projected motion of the engine block at that same position, makes it possible to identify local dynamic phenomena.In Paper B, the kinematic model of Paper A is extended with three assumed bending deformation mode shapes. For the current engine type, all of the assumed deformation modes are ranked within the 10-300 Hz frequency range. The deformation mode of highest importance is the engine block twist. Including bending deformation increases the accuracy of the engine block vibration description but it also increases the demands on instrumentation.In Paper C, the possibility to modify measured engine vibration signals, for addition or removal of engine mounted components, is investigated. For this purpose, engine vibration measurements were performed with and without a 29 kg brake air compressor mounted to the engine. For the task of removing the effect that this engine mounted component has on the engine block, the two cases of knowing, and not knowing the vibration of the component are both considered. The proposed methodology successfully predicts the changes in engine vibration due to system modification. The proposed method can also be used to estimate the time response of a component's centre of gravity. In this study the component's dynamic properties are derived from measurements but they could also be produced using finite element analysis. This can be useful early in the design process to find critically stressed areas due to base excitation.