A data processing method for determining instantaneous angular speed and acceleration of crankshaft in an aircraft engine-propeller system using a magnetic encoder

This paper presents a method for determining the instantaneous angular speed and instantaneous angular acceleration of the crankshaft in a reciprocating engine and propeller dynamical system from electrical pulse signals generated by a magnetic encoder. The method is based on accurate determination of the measured global mean angular speed and precise values of times when leading edges of individual magnetic teeth pass through the magnetic sensor. Under a steady-state operating condition, a discrete deviation time vs. shaft rotational angle series of uniform interval is obtained and used for accurate determination of the crankshaft speed and acceleration. The proposed method for identifying sub- and super-harmonic oscillations in the instantaneous angular speeds and accelerations is new and efficient. Experiments were carried out on a three-cylinder four-stroke Saito 450R model aircraft engine and a Solo propeller in connection with a 64-teeth Admotec KL2202 magnetic encoder and an HS-4 data acquisition system. Comparisons with an independent data processing scheme indicate that the proposed method yields noise-free instantaneous angular speeds and is superior to the finite difference based methods commonly used in the literature. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.