Fault detection and diagnosis of historical vehicle engines using acoustic emission techniques


ACTA IMEKO 
ISSN: 2221-870X 
March 2021, Volume 10, Number 1, 77 - 83 

 

ACTA IMEKO | www.imeko.org March 2021 | Volume 10 | Number 1 | 77 

Fault detection and diagnosis of historical vehicle engines 
using acoustic emission techniques 

Alejandro Roda-Buch1,2, Emilie Cornet1, Guillaume Rapp1, Brice Chalançon3, Stefano Mischler2, Laura 
Brambilla1 

1 Haute Ecole Arc Conservation-Restauration, HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and arts Western Switzerland, Espace de l’Europe 11,  
  CH-2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland 
2 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland 
3 Association de Gestion du Musée National de l’Automobile, 188 Av. de Colmar, 68100 Mulhouse, France 

 

 

Section: RESEARCH PAPER  

Keywords: Historical vehicles; acoustic emission; NDT; fault diagnosis 

Citation: Alejandro Roda-Buch, Emilie Cornet, Guillaume Rapp, Brice Chalançon, Stefano Mischler, Laura Brambilla, Fault detection and diagnosis of historical 
vehicle engines using acoustic emission techniques, Acta IMEKO, vol. 10, no. 1, article 11, March 2021, identifier: IMEKO-ACTA-10 (2021)-01-11 

Editor: Eulalia Balestrieri, University of Sannio, Italy 

Received May 1, 2020; In final form September 26, 2020; Published March 2021 

Copyright: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, 
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 

Funding: This work was supported by HES-SO RCDAV funding, Switzerland 

Corresponding author: Laura Brambilla, e-mail: laura.brambilla@he-arc.ch  

 

1. INTRODUCTION 

The peculiarity of the objects constituting technical, 
industrial, and scientific cultural heritage lies in the presence of 
specific mechanisms. The functionality of these artefacts, i.e. the 
possibility of making them work, is an integral part of the objects 
themselves. The reactivation of these mechanisms, however, is 
often a challenge for the conservators, especially if the 
functioning has been stopped for a long period of time. In short, 
the presence of corrosive products, deposits, oxidation, and 
particles, as well as the scaling of oils or lubricants, can prevent 
the mechanisms from working properly or can even lead to their 
breakdown during reactivation. In addition, the reactivation 
procedure must be performed while respecting the material 
authenticity of the object, i.e. preserving the original parts of the 
mechanism as far as possible. 

Among the objects that incorporate mechanisms, vehicles are 
especially complex due to of the number of parts and or sub-

systems involved in their functioning. Given the aforementioned 
obstacles to the reactivation of historical engines, the choice of 
exhibition and maintenance of the vehicles in museums and 
collections is generally reduced to the following two options: 

i. static: the vehicle is exposed and its engine is never 
operated (on occasion, the engine is even removed 
from the vehicle for practical and safety reasons); 

ii. dynamic: the vehicle is used, or at least activated 
periodically. 

In order to be able to reactivate the mechanisms without 
damage while simultaneously preserving the cultural value and 
the original materials of the objects, the conservators require 
specific diagnostic tools for the detection of any malfunctions at 
a very early stage. 

In the field of historical vehicle conservation, there currently 
exists no reliable non-invasive technique for the diagnosis and 
monitoring of the engine’s functioning. Therefore, the 
maintenance of old engines is extremely time consuming and 

ABSTRACT 
The reactivation of artefact mechanisms is always a challenge for conservators. Non-invasive diagnostic techniques, applicable directly 
on the artifacts, allows for performing early-stage diagnostics and avoiding damage. The Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Historical 
Vehicles (ACUME_HV) project represents the first use of acoustic emission (AE) as a non-invasive technique for the diagnostics of 
historical vehicles. The aim of this project is to develop an objective, human-independent method. This will help museum personnel to 
make decisions regarding the reactivation of historical vehicle engines using measurements and data analysis rather than merely 
personal experience. Herein, we present the results of the first phase of the ACUME_HV project, which was focused on the development 
of a protocol for the use of AE during cold tests. 

mailto:laura.brambilla@he-arc.ch


 

ACTA IMEKO | www.imeko.org March 2021 | Volume 10 | Number 1 | 78 

requires personnel with specialised competency. Indeed, the 
assessment of the correct functioning is generally left to the 
expertise of the specialists, who tend to largely base their 
evaluation on previous experience, using methods ranging from 
visual examination to listening to the sound of the engine. 
However, this approach is empirical, human-dependent, and has 
never been correctly standardised. 

As such, the use of non-invasive techniques, such as acoustic 
emission (AE) techniques [1], for the evaluation of the 
mechanisms’ condition could prevent damage occurring during 
the reactivation and could help in developing a monitoring 
protocol based on factual measurements. 

The Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Historical Vehicles 
(ACUME_HV) project, led by HE-Arc CR, represents the first 
use of AE as a non-invasive technique for the diagnostics of 
historical vehicles, and was carried out in collaboration with the 
Musée National de l’Automobile de Mulhouse (MNAM) in 
France. The aim of this project is to develop an objective, 
human-independent method that will assist museum personnel 
with their decision making regarding the reactivation of historical 
vehicle engines using measurements and data analysis rather than 
personal experience alone. 

The use of the AE technique has already been applied to the 
diagnosis of faults during the operation of newly produced 
engines [2]-[10]. Here, El-Ghambry et al. [4] analysed the AE rms 
signals of diesel engines in the time domain in view of identifying 
– using the machine timing – machine fault conditions. The 
authors used selective time windowing of the AE signals and 
different statistical features and pattern recognition techniques to 
isolate and identify various fault conditions in reciprocating 
engines. 

Meanwhile, Douglas et al. [5] studied the interaction between 
piston rings and cylinder liners using AE for in-service engine 
monitoring and found that, for small high-speed direct injection 
(HSDI) engines, the AE activity was proportional to the piston 
speed and that the most likely AE source (among other 
contributions) was the boundary friction between the oil-control 
ring and the cylinder liner. 

Various analytical models and predictive tools [11]-[19] have 
been developed through using the AE technique to characterise 
and model the friction and wear in sliding contacts under various 
lubricated conditions, including the scuffing phenomenon. 

Meanwhile, in the field of cultural heritage, the AE technique 
has been used for monitoring the conservation state of heritage 
objects or for detecting insects in wooden musical instruments 
[20]-[22]. In addition, AE has been used for several years for the 
structural damage analysis and health monitoring of historical 
masonry buildings. Of particular interest in this domain is the 
application of the Gutenberg–Richter (GBR) law to AE 
measurements in order to correlate the magnitude and the 
number of events within a certain time period [23]-[26]. 

Despite the extended use of the AE technique in the field of 
modern engine diagnosis, the capacity of this technique for 
providing valuable diagnostic results remains a challenge in the 
field of cultural heritage. In short, the attendant limitations arise 
from the technical characteristics of the historical vehicles and 
their conservation state, mainly in the case of reactivation 
processes. 

The present work is organised in terms of five sections. In 
section 2, the methodology adopted for the ACUME_HV 
project to define a protocol for the reactivation of the historical 
vehicle engines is described before section 3 describes the 
measuring system and the set of tests carried out to follow the 

discussed methodology. In section 4, the results accounting for 
the non-uniform driving speed of the engine during the tests are 
presented and discussed as is a comparison between the tests to 
discriminate the effect of compression in the cylinders. Finally, 
the main conclusions are summarised in section 5. 

2. METHODOLOGY 

A reliable diagnostic tool must have the capacity to capture 
signal features that can be correlated with the state of the system. 
The conservation/restoration procedure for reactivating an 
engine [27] begins with a visual inspection of the whole engine 
in view of evaluating the general condition of the individual 
components. At this stage, the liquids of the oil and cooling 
systems are changed and the accessorial components are repaired 
where necessary. Prior to starting the engine, the next step 
involves assessing the functioning of the mechanisms. In order 
to achieve this, the engine is moved manually before an expert 
checks the engine’s operation, both visually and acoustically. This 
procedure is known as a ‘cold test’ and is performed without 
starting the engine to minimise the possible damage during the 
reactivation process. To ensure this condition, the combustion 
process is excluded from the evaluation, with only the 
mechanical displacements taken into account [27]. 

At this critical stage, the procedure developed during the 
ACUME_HV project will be introduced in view of replacing the 
human-dependent diagnosis, with the measurement of the AE 
signals generated by friction and/or impacts at different contact 
pairs of the engine mechanisms, such as crankshaft/connecting 
rod, connecting rod/piston, piston rings/cylinder liner, as well 
as inside the cam chain system. The airflow or air leakage at the 
valve inlets/outlets and between the piston-ring/cylinder-liner 
gaps can also be detected at this point. The following step of this 
new procedure involves obtaining the mechanical signature of 
the engine for different reactivating conditions (i.e. with/without 
cylinder compression). Finally, the last step involves the use of 
statistical analysis techniques to extract specific features that will 
then be used to classify and correlate the operational state of the 
mechanical parts of the engine. 

First, the method was tested on an engine that was removed 
from the vehicle to ensure complete access to all the parts of the 
engine. This engine, known as a ‘bench engine’, was bought by 
the MNAM as a spare for the possible reparation of certain 
vehicles in their collection. The engine was mounted on a test 
bench while keeping all of the cam system and pump 
mechanisms operative. The mechanical parts were manually 
operated at a relatively low rotating speed through turning the 
crankshaft via a handle. This procedure allowed for maintaining 
good control of the interplay between different parts, thus 
avoiding possible damage to the machine. 

3. ENGINE, MEASUREMENT SYSTEM AND TEST SETS 

The AE tests were performed on two Renault AG1-type 
engines (Figure 1), which are part of the collection held by the 
Musée National de l’Automobile de Mulhouse. Among the 
reasons for selecting this specific model were the easy access to 
most parts of the engine, even when assembled in the vehicle, 
the simplicity of the engine, which has only two cylinders and 
basic auxiliary systems, and the availability at MNAN of three 
identical engines (AG1), two of which are still in working order 
[28]. 

The measurement equipment is shown in Figure 2a, while a 
block diagram of the experimental set-up is schematised in 



 

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Figure 2b. An AE system from Vallen® was used to acquire the 
AE signals, which included a MB2-V1 chassis with four AE 
sensors and four parametric input channels. The four broadband 
AE sensors were VS900-M (between 100 and 900 kHz) sensors, 
with the corresponding AEP5 preamplifiers (+34 dB) also 
included in the system. The sampling frequency of the AE signals 
was set to 2 MHz, while a 1-MHz low pass filter was used to 
reduce the noise from high frequencies. The crankshaft angular 
position was also measured with a full continuous 360 ° smart 
position sensor (VISHAY Spectrol 601-1045; output signal 0–
5 V) at a sampling rate of 1.25 kHz. 

To carry out this research, three different sets of tests were 
implemented. An initial set of measurements was performed to 
determine the optimal location of the AE sensors for obtaining 
representative signals from different AE sources [29], [30]. The 
locations selected for the following sets of tests were those 
presenting higher signal levels, lower signal-to-noise ratios, and 
the highest presence of events for the measured AE signals. 
Figure 3 shows the final locations of the four AE sensors. Here, 
two were placed on the cylinder block, the first (1) on the outer 
part of the first cylinder (the one closest to the front), and the 
second (2) on the opposite side close to the first cylinder valves. 
Meanwhile, the remaining two sensors were placed on the 
crankcase, one (3) on the cover of the gears of the cam system, 
and the other (4) on the crankcase leg of the valve side. 

A second set of tests was then conducted to analyse the effect 
of the engine speed on the AE signal level. In this set, the spark 
plugs of both cylinders were removed to prevent air compression 
inside the cylinders and, consequently, to produce a smoother 
and more constant motion of the engine. Here, different engine 
speeds were tested, ranging from 0.25 to 1.2 cycles per second 
(cps), with the engine activated manually using an external 
handle. 

Finally, a third set of tests was performed to observe the 
influence of the compression of the air inside the cylinders on 
the AE signals. The results obtained with the spark plugs 
removed (set 2) were then compared with those obtained with 
the plugs left in (set 3). 

Test sets 2 and 3 were also performed on two different 
engines to observe the main characteristics of the mechanical 
signature and the mechanical airflow signature of different 
motors of the same type, that is, the bench engine already used 
for test set 1 and the engine of the collection car, which remained 
mounted in the car. 

 

Figure 1. Renault AG1 (Inv.2209) with its 2 cylinder engine (© MNAM, 2016). 

 

 

Figure 2. (a) Vallen® measurement system of AE signals, (b) block diagram of 
the experimental set-up (© HE-Arc CR, 2018). 

 

Figure 3. AE sensor location on the Renault AG1 engine (© HE-Arc CR, 2019). 

Acoustic	
emission	
sensor	

DAQ	+	
conditioning	

PC		+		Signal	
Analysis	Techniques	Tested	

engine	

(b) 



 

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4. RESULTS 

In this section, the results for two specific studies are 
presented. The first study relates to the influence of the rotational 
speed of the engine on the AE feature and the second to the 
mechanical signature and the mechanical airflow signature of the 
two engines. 

The root means square of the AE signals (AE rms) was the 
feature used to extract the mechanical and air compression 
signature of the engine under cold-test conditions. The rms was 
calculated for blocks of signals with a rate of 10 ms. This feature 
is related to the AE signal energy generated by, for example, the 
sliding friction processes in contact pairs [6]. 

4.1. Engine speed influence in acoustic emission signal feature 

Figure 4a shows the time change of the AE rms of the 
cylinder at sensor 1, Figure 4b the angular position, and Figure 
4c the rotational speed of the crankshaft. In Figure 4b, the 
crankshaft angular position is related to the thermodynamic cycle 
of the engine, which is comprised of 720 ° or two complete 
crankshaft revolutions. When the first piston was at the top dead 
centre (TDC) position, the rotation reached angular values of 0 
°, 360 ° or 720 °. It can be seen that the test started slightly before 

the piston passed by the TDC before the crankshaft was rotated 
by four revolutions and its movement was extended for a little 
longer. This procedure guaranteed that two thermodynamic 
cycles were fully recorded. Figure 4c was obtained using the time 
derivative of the curve in Figure 4b. 

It was clear that there was a high correlation between the AE 
rms feature and the crankshaft angular position and, 
consequently, the relative motion of the piston to the cylinder. 
Minimum AE rms values emerged at the TDC and the bottom 
dead centre (BDC) of both pistons where the piston speed was 
the lowest, while maximum values emerged at the mid position 
between the TDC and BDC where the piston speed was 
maximised. This indicates that the main source of the AE waves 
was the sliding friction between the piston rings and the cylinder 
liners. Another outcome that must be highlighted is that the 
crankshaft rotational speed was not constant throughout the test 
(Figure 4c), which was due to the way the motion was driven (i.e. 
manually) and to the variable resistance torque of the engine 
during its motion. 

A normalisation of the AE rms feature to a defined crankshaft 
rotational speed of 0.5 cps was performed in order to compare 
the AE rms feature for different crankshaft positions obtained at 
different speeds with both the same test and with different tests. 
This speed was selected since it can be easily reached in cold tests 
both with and without air compression inside the cylinders. To 
transform the AE rms from the measured signal to the 
normalised speed, a proportional relationship described by Eq. 1 
was applied at regular time intervals of 10 ms: 

𝐴𝐸𝑟𝑚𝑠,𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑚 (𝑡) = 𝐴𝐸𝑟𝑚𝑠,𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝑡)
0.5 𝑐𝑝𝑠

𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝑡)
 (1) 

where AErms,norm(t) and AErms,meas(t) are the AE features normalised 
and measured, respectively, and nmeas(t) and 0.5 are the measured 
crankshaft rotational speed (in cps) and the normalised speed for 
the corresponding time interval, respectively. This 
transformation is based on the results obtained by Douglas et al. 
[5], which indicated that the AE energy generated during the 
sliding friction between the piston rings and the cylinder liners is 
proportional to the relative speed between the solids in contact. 
This result was confirmed, for the range of speeds tested, by 
observing the AE rms from measured signals as a function of the 
speed at different crankshaft positions (see Figure 5). 
 

(a)  

(b)  

(c)  

Figure 4. Time evolution of (a) AE rms signal of sensor 1, (b) crankshaft 
angular position, (c) crankshaft rotational speed. 

 

Figure 5. AE rms signal of sensor 3 vs. crankshaft rotational speed at ±75 ° 
from TDC. 



 

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4.2. Acoustic emission signatures 

The normalised AE rms signals measured using cylinder 
sensor 1 in relation to the crankshaft angular position are plotted 
in Figure 6 for the two different engines: (a) the bench engine 
and (b) the collection car engine. 

The crankshaft rotation evolved for two complete 
thermodynamic cycles (0 °–720 °; first cycle in blue and second 
cycle in red) corresponding to four full revolutions of the 
crankshaft. The TDC of cylinders 1 and 2 corresponded to a 0 ° 
and a 180 ° rotation, respectively. Both pistons completed four 
back-and-forth reciprocating motions, while every pass through 
the TDC and the BDC corresponded to a change in speed 
direction, where the piston speed was null. At these points, the 
AE rms was close to zero, which confirmed that the main source 
of the AE events in the cylinder block was the sliding friction 
between the piston rings and the cylinder liner. The absence of 
air compression inside the cylinders prevented, in these cases, the 
generation of AE waves from airflows. 

The results are clearly reproducible for every engine when the 
normalised AE rms is taken into account. These results represent 
the mechanical signature (with an absence of air compression) of 
the engine’s condition. In fact, when comparing the AE rms 
evolution between the two engines, it became clear that the 
mechanical signature is univocally representative of the engine. 

The normalised AE rms signals of sensor 1 when the spark 
plugs were left in, meaning air was compressed inside the 

cylinders, are plotted in Figure 7 for the two previously tested 
engines. 

Two main differences can be observed for the results with 
(Figure 7) and without (Figure 6) spark plugs. First, there was a 
clear increase in AE rms level in the range of 90 °–180 ° and 630 
°–720 °, which was associated with the compression phase of the 
second and first cylinder, respectively. Second, various punctual 
spiky AE events that were related to the valves’ opening and 
closing operations emerged. The AE rms signals shown in Figure 
7 are the combination of the mechanical signature (Figure 6) and 
the AE events from the airflows in the compression phases and 
the valve operation of the engine when the spark plugs were left 
in. 

A deeper analysis of the data shown in Figure 7 allowed for 
the detection of a failure in the valve system of the collection 
engine (case b). The AE rms signals of the bench engine (Figure 
7a) during the compression phases of both cylinders (90 °–180 ° 
and 630 °–720 ° for the second and first cylinders, respectively) 
presented a similar evolution. On the contrary, for the collection 
engine (Figure 7b), the signal evolution of the compression phase 
of the second cylinder (90 °–180 °) was significantly different (in 
both shape and level) from the signal of the compression phase 
of the first cylinder (630 °–720 °). After noting this divergent 
compression evolution, a specific test was performed to check 
the airtightness of the second cylinder, which revealed a fault in 
the seat of the intake valve, leading to a loss in compression of 
around 35 %. 

(a)  (b)  

Figure 6. Normalised AE rms signals of sensor 1 with spark plugs removed: (a) bench engine, (b) collection engine. 

(a)  (b)  

Figure 7. Normalised AE rms signals of sensor 1 with spark plugs left in: (a) bench engine, (b) collection engine. 



 

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This malfunctioning behaviour could also be observed when 
analysing the AE rms signals of other channels. Figure 8 shows 
the normalised AE rms evolution for the bench (case a) and 
collection (case b) engines. Here, the results without (in blue) and 
with (in red) spark plugs are superimposed for each engine. On 
comparing the red results in both graphs, it was clear that while 
the signal evolution during the compression phase for the bench 
engine was quite similar, the signal of the collection engine 
presented a spike at around 90 ° (marked with arrows in Figure 
7b) during the compression phase of the second cylinder. This 
event was not observed either in the compression phase of the 
first cylinder of the collection engine or in the compression 
phases of the bench engine. 

5. CONCLUSIONS 

In this paper, a diagnostic tool based on AE measurements 
was developed to help conservation/restoration specialists in 
reactivating historical vehicle engines. This new tool will provide 
innovative and more objective diagnostic features that are free of 
human subjective evaluation. By performing cold tests at the 
initial reactivation stages to prevent any damage to the heritage 
artefacts, the mechanical signature of the engine’s condition can 
be obtained from appropriate AE measurements. 

In order to collect reliable AE signals for various types of 
engine, a preliminary study should be performed in view of 
determining the correct sensor positions, which will ensure that 
appropriate signatures for performing an accurate diagnosis of 
the engine’s condition will be obtained. 

When using AE rms features, the influence of the crankshaft 
rotational speed in the signal levels must be taken into account. 
In this work, for the range of speeds used in the tests, a 
proportional correlation was applied to normalise the AE rms 
signal. This normalisation procedure ensured good 
reproducibility of the obtained signals. The use of a controlled 
speed system for driving the engine motion or the use of other 
analytical techniques in the frequency or time-frequency domains 
could help to avoid the issue of non-constant rotational speeds. 

The preliminary results demonstrated that performing cold 
tests using this AE technique is a promising approach to 
detecting various malfunctions (e.g. air leakages in the valves), 
one that involves applying adequate data treatment procedures 
to the AE features obtained from the mechanical signatures of 
the engines. 

Another interesting potential use for this technique is in the 
future maintenance procedures of the analysed engines. Once a 

reliable signature of the actual working condition of an engine is 
registered, this diagnostic tool can be used to compare or analyse 
the evolution of the future engine signatures in relation to the 
reference signature. As such, a database of the engines of an 
existing collection could be created and stored for future 
comparisons. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

The authors wish to acknowledge HES-SO RCDAV for 
funding the ACUME_HV project, the Musée Nationale de 
l’Automobile in Mulhouse (France) for their material and 
technical support, and Jean-Charles Peruchetti, lecturer at 
ENSISA in Mulhouse (France), for the development of the 
engine’s angular speed monitoring sensor. 

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