The paper presents a method of technical state evaluation of working spaces of a marine diesel engine at the limited control susceptibility. The method foresees making a diagnosis of the engine’s working spaces on the basis of measurements of the exhaust gas pressure in the channels connecting engine cylinders with the turbocharger’s turbine. Diagnostic measurements are carried out at representative (comparative) steady loads depending on floating conditions. In the beginning of the article, the research objects are characterized, i.e. a Zviezda marine main engine M401 type and Detroit Diesel marine auxiliary engine DDA149TI type. Then, diagnostic measures used to identify the condition of the considered engines are defined. Moreover, selected results of diagnostic tests carried out on the engines in current operation on warships in the Polish Navy are demonstrated. The tested diagnostic classifiers confirmed that the elaborated method could be successfully applied for the engines not equipped with indicator valves.

The second part of the article describes the technology of marine engine diagnostics making use of dynamic measurements of the exhaust gas temperature. Little-known achievements of Prof. S. Rutkowski of the Naval College in Gdynia (now: Polish Naval Academy) in this area are presented. A novel approach is proposed which consists in the use

The article discusses the problem of diagnostic informativeness of exhaust gas temperature measurements in turbocharged marine internal combustion engines.

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the problem of mathematical modelling of energy conversion processes in a rotating mechanical system for the purpose of identifying fatigue states of propulsion shafts in this system. A simplified physical model of the analysed system, constructed in an appropriate scale, has made the basis for the experimental research. The research programme took into consideration mechanical fatigue excitation of the model propulsion shaft to find the correlation between the dynamic system load generated by a bending moment and the energy state of a specified shaft segment. A physical model of the analysed process was proposed, for which the plan of static randomised block experiment was worked out. The recorded experimental results were used for statistical analysis of the significance of influence of the quantities exciting the propeller shaft fatigue process and the adequacy of the developed mathematical model describing shaft’s durability. The analysis made use of the F-Snedecor test. The article describes the general concept of the research, the constructed laboratory test rig, and the methodology of statistical inference concerning the significance of influence of input (exciting) parameters of the physical model on the recorded output parameters. The results of the performed statistical tests confirm the absence of the significance of influence of the rotational speed of the propulsion shaft on the selected types of rotating operation of the mechanical system. As a consequence, only one exciting parameter, which is the loading mass, is going to be taken into account in the functional description of fatigue life of the propulsion shaft.