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Even under steady state operating conditions, the pressure variation in individual cylinders, and the corresponding gas-pressure torque are subjected to small random fluctuations from cycle to cycle. The gas-pressure torque of a cylinder may be expressed as a sum of harmonically variable components, each harmonic being affected by these fluctuations. A probabilistic model of the vector interpreting such a harmonic component is developed and used to determine the statistical parameters of the resultant random vector representing the corresponding harmonic order of the engine torque. At the low frequencies of the lowest harmonic orders of the engine torque the crankshaft behaves like a rigid body. This behavior permits to correlate the statistical parameters of the same harmonic components of the resultant torque and of the measured engine speed. This correlation is proved by experiments and used to identify faulty cylinders.

The paper presents a method of determining the Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP) and the gas pressure torque of a multi-cylinder engine using data obtained from the measurement of the crankshaft's speed variation. At steady state operating conditions a Fourier series describe the gas pressure torque of a cylinder and the resultant torque may be obtained by adding the harmonic components corresponding to all cylinders. Only the major harmonic orders, having the same phase for all cylinders add algebraically appearing with large contributions in the spectrum of the resultant torque. The lowest major component has a low frequency and, at this frequency, the crankshaft behaves dynamically like a rigid body. In this situation it is possible to correlate the amplitude of this harmonic order of the gas pressure torque to the same harmonic order of the crankshaft speed.