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High efficiency, power concentration and reliability are the main requirements from Diesel Engines that are used in most technical applications. This becomes more important with the increase of engine size. For this reason the aforementioned characteristics are of significant priority for both marine and power generation applications. To guarantee efficient engine operation and maximum power output, both research and commercial communities are increasingly interested in methods used for supervision, fault-detection and fault diagnosis of large scale Diesel Engines. Most of these methods make use of the measured cylinder pressure to estimate various critical operating parameters such as, brake power, fuel consumption, compression status, etc. The results obtained from the application of any diagnostic technique, used to assess the current engine operating condition and identify the real cause of the malfunction or fault, depend strongly on the quality of these data.

During the last years a great effort has been made by many NATO nations to move towards the use of one military fuel for all the land-based military aircraft, vehicles and equipment employed on the military arena. This idea is known to as the Single Fuel Concept (SFC). The fuel selected for the idea of SFC is the JP-8 (F-34) military aviation fuel which is based upon the civil jet fuel F-35 (Jet A-1) with the inclusion of military additives possessing anti-icing and lubricating properties. An extended experimental investigation has been conducted in the laboratory of Thermodynamic and Propulsion Systems at the Hellenic Air Force Academy. This investigation was conducted with the collaboration of the respective laboratories of National Technical University of Athens and Hellenic Naval Academy as well.

During the last years a great deal of effort has been made for the reduction of pollutant emissions from direct injection Diesel Engines. Towards these efforts engineers have proposed various solutions, one of which is the use of gaseous fuels as a supplement for liquid diesel fuel. These engines are referred to as dual combustion engines i.e. they use conventional diesel fuel and gaseous fuel as well. The ignition of the gaseous fuel is accomplished through the liquid fuel, which is auto-ignited in the same way as in common diesel engines. One of the fuels used is natural gas, which has a relatively high auto-ignition temperature. This is extremely important since the CR of most conventional diesel engines can be maintained. In these engines the released energy is produced partially from the combustion of natural gas and from the combustion of liquid diesel fuel.