Nippon Mining Co., Ltd.

Ihi Inspection and Instrumentation Co., Ltd.

Hiroshi Maru

Shunsuke Kubota

Keiichi Fujita

Tatsuo Sekiya

An apparatus for detecting an operating condition of an internal-combustion engine, particularly a knocking condition of a four stroke cycle gasoline engine including a black body light radiating member formed by an opaque film of a noble metal, a sapphire rod which is arranged to be inserted into a hole formed in an engine head block, the black body light radiating member being arranged on one end of the sapphire rod such that the black body light radiating member is positioned within a combustion chamber, an optical fiber having one end optically coupled with the other end of the sapphire rod, a light detector arranged to receive light emanating from the other end of the optical fiber to produce a temperature signal which represents the heat flux within the combustion chamber, and a signal processing circuit for processing the temperature signal to detect the operating condition of the engine. The signal processing circuit is constructed to detect the operating condition by deriving at least one of the following parameters: a peak value of the temperature signal, a peak value of a derivative of the temperature signal and a timing of the peak of the derivative of the temperature signal.

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Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Maru