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Modern Diesel injection systems have to serve different demands. Beside the improvement of the injection timing and assignment special concentration is focused on increasing injection pressure to improve combustion and lower exhaust gas emissions. With the higher complexity of these systems and the high burden on the pump components especially in the high pressure part of the injection pumps, the wish for supervision of delicate components occurs. Therefore suitable and efficient supervision methods have to be developed to early detect initiating faults. Because of the correlation between combustion and injection, one way to detect faults in the injection system is to supervise the combustion in the individual cylinders. This can be done by evaluating the crankshaft speed at the flywheel. Speed is directly related to combustion by the indicated pressure and the indicated torque respectively, the crankshaft drive and the resulting torque at the crankshaft.

In the scope of a research collaboration, ITT Automotive Europe and Darmstadt University of Technology are developing control strategies for a low-cost Brake-by-Wire system. However, since there is a wide range of variation in the efficiency of the gear units used in electromechanical brakes, this becomes a demanding task. The paper first describes the assembly and operation of ITT's early generation brake actuator. It introduces a model of the electromechanical brake with its structure and subsystems as a major tool in the development process. A detailed analysis of the signals, already available from the brake and the vehicle, is discussed for their advantages and disadvantages with regard to a possible use in the controller design. Different approaches for clamping-force, peripheral-force and brake-torque sensing are compared. An integrated clamping force sensor for feedback control of prototype actuators was developed.