The Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) operates 36 Short Range Radar sites in Canada's far north. Each unmanned site is powered by three Lister-Petter HL-6 diesel engines coupled to Kato Engineering 30 kW brushless generators. Many of these engines have accumulated in excess of 30,000 hours of operation. DND required some means to remotely diagnose/assess the health of these engines in order to determine which gen-set should operate. In addition, there is a need to determine potential maintenance requirements and associated timing of maintenance site visits.
The power contribution of each cylinder of a diesel engine can be used to assess engine condition and assist in locating faults (i.e., fuel rack adjustment, injector fouling, valve seating, ring breakage, etc). In larger diesel engines, cylinder condition is usually assessed by measuring cylinder pressure during operation using permanently installed cylinder pressure access ports. Smaller high-speed diesel engines, such as the Lister-Petter HL-6, are not normally equipped with combustion pressure access ports and the cost of modifying cylinder heads made this approach unattractive to DND.
Advanced Engine Technology Ltd. (AET), has developed an engine condition monitoring system for this application under contract with the North Warning System Office of DND. AET is a research, development and manufacturing company with diesel engine/fuels laboratory facilities located in Nepean, a neighboring city to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The AET Engine Condition Monitor (ECM) can detect any combination of cylinder faults in six-cylinder high-speed diesel generator sets under continually varying loads. The power balance of each cylinder can be predicted to within [+ or -]2 percent RMS and cylinder pressure measurements are not required. Operation of the ECM is fully automated, and engine data can be downloaded from the remote radar sites to a centrally located monitoring station.
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