Traceability of Engine Oil Aging For a Vehicle Fleet by a Microwave Sensor

In this work, we have proposed an approach based on a passive microwave detector to help solve the problem of monitoring, in real time, the quality of the engine oil of a fleet of vehicles. When the complete wear of the engine oil is detected, an information appears indicating the precise moment of the emptying, of the vehicle in question. The proposed detector is simple to make and inexpensive, it is a coaxial line open at its end. Its operating principle is based on the extraction of the relative permittivity of the engine oil from the resonant frequency of the coaxial line. This resonance frequency varies with the wear of the engine oil. Experimental results and simulations have shown the effectiveness of this approach for the traceability of vehicle engine oil aging. They are very encouraging indeed.