Data-driven model for marine engine fault diagnosis using in-cylinder pressure signals

Effective diagnosis of marine engines that is crucial for safe and reliable ship operations requires fidel tools for the identification of critical faults. However, the unavailability of extensive measured data-sets corresponding to engine faulty conditions renders the development of such tools challenging. This study aims to develop a data-driven fault estimation model considering information extraction methods and regression techniques of low computational effort, namely multiple linear and polynomial regression. The required data-sets for healthy and faulty conditions for four critical faults and their combinations are generated by employing a calibrated zero-dimensional thermodynamic model representing a marine four stroke medium speed diesel engine, which is validated against engine shop trial measurements. Fourier analysis of the derived in-cylinder pressure profiles is employed to calculate the coefficients of the harmonic orders. Several harmonics coefficients sets are used as input to the regression models to estimate the severity of the four considered faults. The results demonstrate that initial 20 harmonics are sufficient to effectively estimate the severity for each fault, whereas polynomial regression is highly effective, exhibiting R² values greater than 98% . This study provides insights on the data-driven simultaneous faults severity estimation, and as such it impacts the advancement of cost-effective diagnostic methods for marine engines.