Condition based monitoring for industrial engines

The following paper focuses on the description of an open designed condition analysis system and its methods, which enable the continuous online- or discontinuous offline monitoring of the overall state of a diesel-, heavy fuel oil-, or gas operated large- respectively industrial engine and its subsystems like e. g. the turbocharger. Our Condition monitoring methodology is an integral component of a condition-oriented strategy, whose methods make predictable prognoses possible for large engines plants in order to operate them with the highest possible plant efficiency at a certain safety level. This is only possible by realizing the experimental results, obtained by using high speed cylinder pressure measurement in combination with online diagnostics. The expert system AVL EPOSTM can be used for new engines or as retrofit system for engines in operation. Every root cause of a change in the operating condition of the engine or its subsystems can be analyzed and used for a permanent optimization of the engine operation. This enables planned continuous operation of the engine plant beside the overall monitoring approach to ensure engine safety and engine efficiency. In case of an unforeseeable abrupt breakdown of the system afterwards the exact history until such time as the failure occurred can be analyzed. So the found disturbance can be attributed to the causal origin. By gaining enough information of the system in the past, the gathered data will be used for trend analysis of the near future.