Commissioning an Engine Dynamometer for FSAE

To properly test and tune an engine, an engine dynamometer must be able to dampen the oscillations of the engine speed. For this to happen the dynamometer to be used must be commissioned to the engine’s natural frequencies and power output. The engine must be able to idle and hold a target engine speed to have the results be repeatable. Once this is done then the software and the dynamometer can start to communicate between the two. At different engine speed targets the software has to have three parameters changed to dampen the oscillations from the dynamometer trying to keep the engine at a steady engine speed. The three areas that are controlled are the “Gain”, the “Drift”, and the “Rate”. The “Gain” is how severely the program will tell the dynamometer to load the engine to reach the target engine speeds. “Drift” controls how fast the software will tell the dynamometer to load the engine to correct for the oscillation and over shoot of the set point. For the final controlling value is the “Rate” which is meant for compensating the smaller oscillations and fine tuning. After this is done then the engine can make a full horsepower run. We are currently working on obtaining results from testing. While commissioning the dynamometer to the software and we had experienced component failure in the engine. The engine is being put back together to continue testing