Control/Diagnostic/Maintenance System for High Speed, High Output Diesel Engines

Unmanned surface vehicles have unique requirements for operating reliably during missions of very long time periods without human maintenance. The US Navy has undertaken a R&D initiative to develop and deploy diesel engine powered USVs with advanced technology capabilities. Controls Research, Incorporated in collaboration with Neptune Sciences, Incorporated proposes the development of a novel control, diagnostics and maintenance system for marine diesel engines to support this effort. This control, diagnostic and maintenance system is based on a small but very accurate physics based dynamic model of marine diesel engines. Utilizing this model, synthetic software sensors of the engine speed are formulated, which provide validation checks on the dual hardware engine speed sensors. An extended Kalman filter observer is utilized to filter sensor noise and maintain robust tracking of the engine speed. Diagnostics of engine control functions and engine performance variables are conducted using the engine model to dynamically track and analyze the engine in real time operation. The major benefits of our model based, marine diesel engine control concepts are: 1) Significantly higher reliability and less maintenance requirements than current, state of the art diesel control systems. 2) Flexibility in reconfiguration and adaptability of the control system for use with diesel engines of various sizes and types.