Investigation into piston-slap-induced vibration for engine condition simulation and monitoring

Abstract

Piston slap is a common impact phenomenon existing in the reciprocating engine. It is also a major cause of the complex transient vibration response related to the impact excitation inside the engine. In order to correlate the piston-slap impact with the slap-induced vibration and consequently find out an effective approach for the engine dynamic behaviour simulation and working condition monitoring, an in-depth investigation from theoretical modelling to experimental verification is made in this paper. Firstly, the piston-slap phenomenon inside the reciprocating engine is briefly discussed from the viewpoint of engine mechanics. Based upon this, a nonlinear model is developed to simulate the slap-induced vibration response. Using numerical integration procedure, the slap-induced vibration response and its correlation with the inner-cylinder piston-slap impact are reasonably evaluated. Guided by the simulating results and, by introducing a fast wavelet-packet decomposition and reconstruction algorithm, a specially designed experiment is made to practically measure and extract the slap-induced impact message inside the 6190Z LC diesel engine. Comparison between the simulation and practically measured and reconstructed engine vibration signals verifies the effectiveness and practicality of this approach for more detailed academic research and engineering application.