The shape of Pressure: Compression plot puzzle

I am by no means a math guy or any engineer by any stretch of imagination. However, would piston ring leakage and physical speed of the piston moving at its maximum speed halfway through its stroke have any bearing on that concave?

Great ideas, Maynard, I will discuss them in the update!

Dmitriy. I find this interesting. What type of work do you do? You are on a whole other level than me. I wonder If Bernie has RSR and comp #'s for you? I can't help but think the data may be skewed from inaccurate data input. Could you humor me and input lower and higher RSR to demostrate? I can think of no reason for data to be skewed high in the midstroke, If anything I would suspect low

Hi Bill, mostly I work with financial data, but sometimes I get to work on a logistics or scheduling project. It would be great if Bernie chimed in with the exact values and I would need to redo the experiment only once... but in case that doesn't happen -- see attached graphs! RSR within 1.5 .. 1.9 does not seem to have much effect, and CR needs to go all the way to 7 to straighten out the

Interesting. I asked what you do for work because this type of data point collection and analysis would likely be applicable to writing diagnostic programs into a vehicles ECM. Something I suspect will be coming very soon. Not specifically for in cylinder pressure transducer readings, more so to work with all the signals the vehicle is already equipped with that are not utilized as well as

Data analysis is pretty universal, and, for sure, people are writing code to detect misfires and enhance fuel management. But if it goes inside the ECM, it's a proprietary algorithm... and we can only observe echoes of it in scantool values. If I could reproduce or reverse engineer some of those algorithms to help diagnosticians with their tasks, that would be pretty cool. If you notice a good

I see no reason why there should not already be mechanical fault codes or guided tests to pinpoint a mechanical fault. Some tools have capability to perform a relative compression test. Why not make it guided and add data from map sensors to drill down further yet. I just think there is a pile of uncharted water. My opinion is a really good diagnostics program could make car repair much simpler…

Hmm, why are you sure there will be a scantool at all? :) There is a chance the "scantool" will be integrated into the car computer (which will run tests and store log files), and all you'd have to do is to connect a laptop via the Ethernet plug and "log in" into the car computer to access the results (after paying $$$ to the manufacturer for the login info, of course!).

I don't think there will be a scan tool. I think it will be integrated into the vehicle. There will be a Human machine interface. I think it will be a set of augmented reality glasses. They verify you with a retina scan, and then show you what the problem is. It will tell you where to look and how to fix it. If it's in a new place then it will record that and enter it into its data base. I

That math is over my head but if I remember correctly Bernie mentioned something about actual pressure values being higher because the speed of the piston movement puts energy into the volume of air, which creates heat and the heat then further increases pressure, or something like that. I will have to go back and re-read what Bernie wrote. Interesting thought puzzle.

Hi Bob, good memory, Bernie did talk about that process in the article. But in the HCCI article he posted about a month ago he describes it in even more detail. Technically, any time the piston performs work to compress gas (no matter how fast or slow), that work gets added to gas energy. More energy would mean more heat, but there is also heat loss through cylinder walls. When the piston

Maynard, Bill, Bob -- thank you for your replies! This is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping for. This is how I understand the compression process. To compress, the piston performs work. This work adds to energy of gas. That energy can leak out though -- some as heat loss, some as a leak, literally. If the ratio of leaked (no matter how) energy to total added energy is constant, the

Dmitriy, I know this was an oldie, there is still a lot of great information I'm catching up with on here. Your post, and the picture, reminds me of a similar discussion I saw in an old book that described building, calibrating, and using an apparatus for timing steam engines. It was an intricate setup that actually essentially worked as an incredibly early pressure transducer/lab scope as it

Dmitriy, Better late than never I guess. Did some reading and thinking. My math is rusty, but logarithims are generally used, especially in finance, to change a non-linear equation into a linear one, correct? So is there a possibility that just the nature of this mathematical expression can't accurately represent a real life compression event? I ask from a place of lack of education. What

Chris, thank you for the follow-up. There are quite a few variables left to explore, but you just mentioned the big one -- the crankshaft speed change during the process. In all the analysis above I rely on the 0-720 degree grid, but it is not precise! So next time I will try to process the waveform that includes both the pressure values and the CKP signal.

Dmitriy, I believe I have quite a few in cylinder waveforms with cam/crank syncs. I believe there are quite a few where i even disabled cylinders to see what effect it would have on the in cylinder waveform. Unfortunately, they are not Pico captures (only ever had a snap on scope), but I'd be more than willing to send you what I have for research purposes.