operation, otherwise it could lead to serious damage to the engine and the vessel. Learn about deflection in a crankshaft and how to keep the alignment within limits.
Introduction
In the previous article we studied about marine diesel engine crankshafts in terms of their construction, materials and so on. In this article we will proceed to learn about one very important task related to marine diesel engine crankshafts and that is learning to take their deflections. In the succeeding paragraphs you will learn about the importance and procedure of the same.
Apart from using the same point on the crank-web for measuring deflection there are other factors which need to be kept in mind and these include load on the ship, trim, hog, sag etc. Ideally the deflection needs to be taken at four points of the crank namely top, bottom and the two sides. In actual practice however the bottom reading is not taken due to chances of fouling by the connecting rod and instead reading is taken on both sides of the bottom position, thereby in total 5 readings are taken from each crankweb at the positions shown by the following figure.
We will learn more about recording, presenting and interpretation of the results in the next article