Instrumentation and Control of a Locomotive Diesel Electric Engine

The objective was to design, develop, automate and test locomotive diesel electric engines up to their maximum power output (3MW).

Six force cooled resistor banks provided the electrical load and three resistance steps were used to simulate the locomotives performance at different operating conditions. To provide different resistances at each stage, 13 locomotive contactors were used to alter the resistor connections. The system monitors the temperatures of the electrical load resistor banks. The software varied output load resistances with all interlocks and safety procedures in place.

The signal conditioning modules for transducers (voltages, currents, pressures and temperatures), digital input and output for relays, with isolation, were custom designed, manufactured and installed. Modbus communications were added to communicate with other industrial devices. The control system software was developed in LabVIEW. All digitization of analogue signals used National Instruments (NI) multifunction digitizer cards.

The system is capable of automating the locomotive throttle via the locomotives master controller as well conducting generic and automatic engine performance testing (horsepower, engine run- in, generic testing, and turbo run-in), graphing, database and reporting. 

The system corrected the horsepower for ambient/fuel temperatures & ambient pressure in real time.

For the generic engineering testing, an additional 32 channels of sensor data could be recorded.

For more information on customised engineering test benches for your industry please contact Gamma Engineering.

https://gammaengineering.com.au