Internal combustion engines will have an important role on a road to decarbonization and a sustainable powertrain system in the maritime sector. Electrification of the maritime sector is currently difficult due to its excessive energy density demand. Therefore, internal combustion engines will remain a primary power source for ships in the near future. A novel combustion concept, reactivity-controlled compression ignition (RCCI), can be seen as one of the promising combustion technologies that enables simultaneous ultra-low NOx and soot emissions, as well as high thermal efficiency. Although the concept has been developed for a long time, its feasibility for large-bore engine applications has not been publicly demonstrated.
The goal of this thesis was to design and implement a new data acquisition system for the large-bore RCCI test bench in University of Vaasa’s VEBIC engine laboratory, as part of the Clean Propulsion Technologies (CPT) project’s work package 3, novel combustion and advanced aftertreatment. The test bench was instrumented with new sensors, analyzers and data acquisition hardware. Devices required to build the system were acquired and device installations, as well as electrical connections were established and supervised. Additionally, data storing workflow, suitable for the new system, was developed. In order to validate the system performance, a partial system test was carried out due to the inability to start up the engine during the thesis.
The results from the partial system test proved that the new data acquisition system is able to measure high sampling frequency signals and record them in reference to crank angle. The system that was designed and implemented in the thesis provided several improvements when compared to the previous system. The number of available high sample frequency channels increased from 8 to 16 and the system provides more flexible real-time post-processing capabilities. The upgraded system also provides a significant improvement in integration, as the high-speed and low-speed measurements can be recorded into a single file. In addition to immediate system improvements, the new system is able to expand according to future requirements of the test bench.
