CatoolCatool

A command line tool for the analysis of recorded internal combustion engine pressure data.
The Combustion Analysis Tool (catool) is a small command-line driven tool designed to allow you to load, validate, analyse and export internal combustion engine data.It is primarily designed to load in-cylinder pressure data measured using piezo-electric pressure transducers and derive standard engine performance metrics.

The analysis of cylinder pressure curves enables the design or development engineer to understand how an engine performs and where performance or economy benefits can be realised. Parameters calculated include mass fraction burned, burn angles, net and gross heat release, knock intensity, pressure rise rates, min/max pressure and thermodynamic loss angle.

catool is capable of loading data saved in standard ASCII CSV files or AVL I-File binary files. This allows catool to post-process data that has been obtained using both "home grown" data acquisition solutions and industry standard combustion analysis kit such as AVL Indimaster and ADAPT CAS.

Whilst catool is designed with in-cylinder pressure analysis in mind it is also flexible enough to load any type of crank-angle and time based data and perform validation and statistical analysis. In addition, a modular approach enables strightforward plug-in development of additional or propriatary analysis methods. catool has been used as a validation tool of powertrain control system inputs to ensure fundemental sensors and actuators such as crankshaft position, injectors and coils are working as intended, especially during cold start conditions.

catool provides standard combustion analysis routines including calculation of mass fraction burned (MFB), burn angles, mean gas temperature, heat release, peak knock pressure and IMEP.

catool is also capable for use as a backend tool between an engine test stand and an engineers desktop. For example, catool can take raw combustion pressure data, perform 4-cycle synchronisation through compression TDC detection, calculate absolute cylinder pressure through a variety of methods including pegging and polytropic compression fitting and finally output data as CSV, AVL I-File or MATLAB data ready for visual analysis with tools such as Microsoft Excel, The MathWorks MATLAB or AVL Concerto.

catool is fast. Written in portable C++ it can be compiled for use on nearly any system including Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac. The fundamental structures and pre-calculations enable data to be processed at high speed even with relatively modest PC's that may be found in test environments.

This enables test data to be post-processed in cell, reducing the load on central servers and enabling data to reach an engineer's desk more efficiently.

What's New in This Release:

Multithreading capable using the pthreads library (Windows and UNIX)

Fixes to heat release and IMEP calculation

Fixes for big-endian and 64-bit architectures

General bug fixes and speed improvements

Free Download ( 133 KB )