Refine Your Search

Search Results

Technical Paper

A Study on the Use of Combustion Phase Indicators for MBT Spark Timing on a Bi-Fuel Engine

2007-09-16
2007-24-0051
The performance of a spark ignition engine strongly depends on the phase of the combustion process with respect to piston motion, and hence on the spark advance; this fundamental parameter is actually controlled in open-loop by means of maps drawn up on the test bench and stored in the Electronic Control Unit (ECU). Bi-fuel engines (e.g. running either on gasoline or on natural gas) require a double mapping process in order to obtain a spark timing map for each of the fuels. This map based open-loop control however does not assure to run the engine always with the best spark timing, which can be influenced by many factors, like ambient condition of pressure, temperature and humidity, fuel properties, engine wear. A feedback control instead can maintain the spark advance at its optimal value apart from operative and boundary conditions, so as to gain the best performance (or minimum fuel consumption).
X