Studies On An Electronic Governor With A Stepper Motor Actuator For A Diesel Engine

A personal computer (PC) based electronic governor was developed in this work for a diesel engine. A stepper motor was used to actuate the rack of the inline fuel pump of the engine with a bell crank lever. The digital output of the system was used to control the stepper motor using special hardware. This governor was tested under different steady and transient operating conditions. The electronic governor performed satisfactorily. In most cases the speed settled down in time duration comparable to that with the mechanical governor. The electronic governor could operate with no change in the mean speed with engine output. The performance was very sensitive to the P, I and D parameters of the control software. It was felt that the system could be improved with a stepper motor of finer steps and higher torque.