Rongcai Wang

The reliability and safety of diesel engines gradually decrease with the increase in running time, leading to frequent failures. To address the problem that it is difficult for the traditional fault status identification methods to identify diesel engine faults accurately, a diesel engine fault status identification method based on synchro squeezing S-transform (SSST) and vision transformer (ViT) is proposed. This method can effectively combine the advantages of the SSST method in processing non-linear and non-smooth signals with the powerful image classification capability of ViT. The vibration signals reflecting the diesel engine status are collected by sensors. To solve the problems of low time-frequency resolution and weak energy aggregation in traditional signal time-frequency analysis methods, the SSST method is used to convert the vibration signals into two-dimensional time-frequency maps; the ViT model is used to extract time-frequency image features for training to achieve diesel engine status assessment. Pre-set fault experiments are carried out using the diesel engine condition monitoring experimental bench, and the proposed method is compared with three traditional methods, namely, ST-ViT, SSST-2DCNN and FFT spectrum-1DCNN. The experimental results show that the overall fault status identification accuracy in the public dataset and the actual laboratory data reaches 98.31% and 95.67%, respectively, providing a new idea for diesel engine fault status identification.

The diesel engine, as the main power source of equipment, faces practical problems in the maintenance process, such as difficulty in fault location and a lack of preventive maintenance techniques. Currently, breakdown maintenance and cyclical preventive maintenance are the main means of maintenance support after a diesel engine failure, but these methods require professional maintenance personnel to carry out manual fault diagnosis, which is time-consuming. Prognostics and health management (PHM), as a new technology in the field of equipment maintenance support, has significant advantages in improving equipment reliability and safety, enhancing equipment maintenance support capability, and reducing maintenance support costs. In view of this, when introducing PHM into diesel engine maintenance support, the research progress and development trend of the key technologies of PHM for diesel engines are carried out with the objective of achieving precise maintenance and scientific management of diesel engines, and the key technologies demand traction. Firstly, the development history of PHM technology is reviewed, and its basic concept and main functions are introduced. Secondly, the system architecture of PHM for diesel engines is constructed, and its key technologies are summarized. Then, the research progress in the field of PHM for diesel engines is reviewed from four aspects: data acquisition, data processing, fault diagnosis, and health status assessment. Finally, the challenges faced by diesel engine PHM in engineering applications are analyzed, effective solutions to address these challenges are explored, and the future development trend is foreseen.