Condition monitoring of lubricating oils in diesel engines

我们的工业合作伙伴加斯托普斯有限公司是加拿大旋转机械状态监测领域的世界领先者。与卡尔顿大学合作，该公司目前正在研究润滑油降解的物理和化学机制，这可能使使用能够预测润滑油剩余使用寿命的在线传感器进行实时状态监测的技术开发成为可能。这项研究需要两项基础性的科学贡献。第一种是校准和表征在线传感器将产生的信号的方法。这需要进行仔细的、可控的石油降解实验，并使用成熟的实验室工具准确地描述由此产生的副产品。第二个要求是准确模拟石油降解过程。一旦传感器被校准，以准确识别关键降解副产物的类型和浓度，如果存在基于润滑油的当前状态和机械的预期运行条件来推断润滑油状况的模型，则传感器只能预测润滑油的剩余使用寿命。我们的理论、计算和实验相结合的方法将导致具有这种预测能力的化学动力学模型的发展。

Our industrial partner, Gastops Ltd, is a Canadian world leader in condition monitoring of rotating machinery. In collaboration with Carleton University, the company is now studying physical and chemical mechanisms of degradation in lubricants, potentially enabling developments of technologies for real-time condition monitoring using on-line sensors capable of predicting the remaining useful life of a lubricating oil. This research requires two fundamental scientific contributions. The first is a means to calibrate and characterize the signals that an on-line sensor will produce. This entails careful, controlled oil degradation experiments and accurate characterizations of the resulting by-products using well-established lab-based tools. The second requirement is accurate modeling of the oil degradation processes. Once the sensor is calibrated to accurately identify the types and concentrations of key degradation by-products, it can only predict the remaining useful life of lubricating oil if a model exists to extrapolate lubricating oil conditions based on the current state of the oil and the expected operating conditions of the machinery. Our combined theoretical, computational and experimental approach will lead to the development of a chemical kinetics model with this predictive capability.