La normalización de las concentraciones de particulas de desgaste en aceite aplicada a motores diesel

In this paper the fundamental of the normalization model of the analysis of wear elements in lubricating oil of reciprocating internal combustion engines and a case of applying this methodology to the evaluation of the wear rate of the element iron in a single cylinder diesel engine is present. The normalization method represents an important contribution to the use of wear debris analysis in the assessment of wear and troubleshooting. The oil analysis does not depend of engine type and size, carter capacity and operating conditions. The concentration of a metallic element i normalized Cn (i) is calculated multiplying the concentration of the element of wear in the oil by the concentration coefficient (Kt), which considers the size difference, the volume of lubricant coefficient(Kv), which considers the carter volume differenceand the chemical composition coefficient Km (i),with consider chemical composition difference.For the experimental evaluation of the method afour-stroke, single cylinder, unfiltered lubricantdiesel engine is used and the concentrations weremeasured with atomic spectrometric emission.The analysis of the results of the normalizationcoefficients shows that size, volume of lubricantand chemical composition affect significantlythe wear debris concentration measured. Themeasurements of the same concentrations of a wearelement on the oil in two different engines, it doesnot means that both engines have the same wearrate. This implies that the interpretation of the oilanalysis without using the normalization can leadto misdiagnoses. The normalization of lubricantanalysis allows comparison of the concentrationsand wear rates of engines. This method ensuresmore accurate diagnoses and better predictions ofremaining life of the machines.