The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 20, 2003
Filed:
Nov. 14, 2001
Abstract
There is described a method of diagnosing leakage in a common-rail injection system of an internal combustion engine having a number of cylinders; the injection system having a number of injectors, each supplying high-pressure fuel to a respective cylinder of the engine, and a fuel supply circuit supplying fuel to the injectors. The diagnosis method includes the steps of determining the contribution of each cylinder to the angular acceleration of the engine; determining, for each cylinder, an unbalance index indicating the unbalance of the angular acceleration contribution of the cylinder with respect to the angular acceleration contributions of the other cylinders; reducing, upon detection of a fault in the injection system, the amount of fuel injected into each cylinder; and distinguishing, for each injector, between a jammed-open injector condition and a fault condition in the fuel supply circuit, on the basis of the variation in the unbalance index of the respective cylinder following the fuel reduction.