Practical use of on-board fuel metering systems of diesel locomotives

Abstract

Introduction. On-board fuel metering systems for diesel locomotives created by different manufacturers differ both in the composition of the sensors used and in the software for processing the registration data. This indicates that the pursuit of better efficiency for these systems is still ongoing and is an urgent problem.Materials and methods. The article discusses the problems of determining the fuel consumption according to the data of on-board fuel metering systems for diesel locomotives, associated with various methods for determining the moments of measuring the fuel amount in the tank. The possibility of estimating the influence of the number of position switches of the locomotive throttle on the indicators of absolute and specific fuel consumption has been studied.Results. In the absence of distance and speed sensors in the on-board system, it is proposed to determine the moments of measurement of the fuel amount based on the analysis of changes in the signals of the fuel level sensors over time. The authors present an example of the practical implementation of this solution. The results of on-board systems data processing are also presented, showing that the effect of the spread in the number of throttle position switches observed in ordinary operation of diesel shunter on fuel consumption is comparable to the error in determining this value according to the on-board systems data. The implementation of algorithms in specialised software designed to process data from onboard systems that allow identifying the indicated influence is relevant only for cases of extreme (by an order of magnitude) difference in the number of switching throttle positions in work shifts.Discussion and conclusion. The efficiency of the practical use of information from the on-board systems for metering fuel consumption of a diesel locomotive is largely determined by the quality of specialised software. When developing and improving software, it is recommended to use the approaches discussed in the article.