Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Article Title: Optimizing the Performance of a Marine Diesel Engine towards Proactive Condition Monitoring
by Anthony A. Ishiodu and Ezenwa A. Ogbonnaya

Abstract:
Marine diesel engines are subject to both stresses and vibration due to the environment in which they operate, thereby impeding their performance. The essence of this project is to enunciate a proactive solution to any catastrophic breakdown a marine diesel engine may suffer as a result of environmental factors and vibration. In this paper therefore a method to optimize the performance of the marine diesel engine towards effective condition monitoring is carried out. A four stroke caterpillar 3516B series marine diesel engine with 16-VTS marine diesel engine was used to actualize the work. The theoretical evaluation and analysis were used to calculate the values of pressure, volume and temperature under different speeds and power output at the beginning of ignition. These evaluation and analyses helped to find the different power outputs of the engine at different speeds. A computer program code named MDEPEA written in Visual-Basic programming language was developed. The results obtained show that the value of 42.952KW to 1647.84KW of power output and 239.01kN/m2 to 1791.13kN/m2 for mean effective pressure should be maintained to avoid a breakdown of the engine.

Keywords: proactive condition monitoring, diesel engine, optimization, ignition and performance, mean effective pressure

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