Objectives  Due to many disadvantages in obtaining the fault type data of large marine diesel engine through bench testing or real ship, the numerical calculation of diesel engine fault simulation is particularly important, which is of great significance to the construction of diesel engine fault troubleshooting and data-driven intelligent fault diagnosis systems.

  Methods  Based on AVL BOOST software and bench test data, the diesel engine simulation model was established to verify that the simulation model meets the accuracy requirements under four load conditions. Based on the model of full load condition, the control variable method was used to simulate the typical faults of a diesel engine, such as combustion start angle, single cylinder stoppage and crankcase gas escape, and the calculated data results were analyzed.

  Results  The results show that, the maximum combustion pressure in the cylinder increases by 17.4% when the start angle of combustion is advanced by 5°. After No.1 cylinder is stopped, the effective fuel consumption rate increases by nearly 15%. Compared with different cylinders, the change range of the characteristic parameters of No.2, No.3 cylinders is small. With the increase of effective piston channeling air clearance, the characteristic parameters basically show a linear expansion trend. When the channeling air clearance is 0.04 mm, some characteristic parameters drastically increase, such as the fuel consumption rate increasing by nearly 40%.

  Conclusions  The results obtained by the simulation can be used as an important basis for the recognition of fault states and diesel engine intelligent fault diagnosis system construction, to explore a new approach for marine diesel engine intelligent fault diagnosis technology.