Blind Source Separation of Internal Combustion Engine Vibration Signals

Abstract

Internal combustion engines have several vibration sources, such as combustion, fuel injection, piston slap and valve operation. For machine condition monitoring or design improvement purposes, it is necessary to separate the vibration signals caused by different sources and then analyse them separately. However, traditional frequency analysis techniques are not very useful due to overlap of different sources over a wide frequency range. This paper separates the vibration signals, especially piston slap, by using blind source separation techniques with the intention of reavealing the potential of the new technique for solving mechanical vibration problems. The BSS method is briefly described and separation results for both simulated and measured data are presented.