Search Results

The optimization of fuel efficiency and the minimization of the residual gas fraction require individual cylinder control of the amounts of inducted air mass and injected fuel mass. Determination of an individual cylinder air/fuel ratio (AFR) regulator is based on the measured AFR for each cylinder, using 4 proportional UEGO sensors. The innovative character of this study describes a unified and robust individual cylinder AFR estimator, using a single measuring point: a proportional oxygen sensor located in the exhaust manifold. The model used for the estimator is a state model such that the dimension of the state and measurement matrices are unique, whatever the manifold configuration and the sensor position (confluence point or exhaust manifold: unified model), the engine speed (robust model).

Torque based engine control seems to be the trend for the future for powertrain management (automatic gearbox, hybrid vehicles). Today, torque estimation is best achieved using cylinder pressure transducers. This paper proposes a method to achieve a good accuracy of the torque using Bézier curves to reconstruct the cylinder pressure peak from the low frequency embedded pressure measurements. As is, IMEP cannot be used on a cycle to cycle basis for engine torque control, due to the very high cycle to cycle variability of SI engines. To improve the quality of the IMEP feedback data, this paper proposes a moving horizon filtering method.

To meet future pollutant emissions standards, it is crucial to be able to estimate the cycle by cycle in-cylinder mass and the composition of the combustion chamber charge. This charge consists of residual gases from the previous cycle, fresh air and fuel. Consequently, the estimation of the fresh air mass based on total in-cylinder mass is a function of residual gas fraction. This estimation is essential to compute the fuel mass to be injected. This paper proposes an algorithm, based on physical equations, which estimates the in-cylinder total mass based on cylinder pressure. A residual gas model, which computes the burned gas fraction, is then used to determine the fresh air mass. The paper shows that the algorithm, tested on a Spark Ignited engine, is very robust to noise. To test the estimator several parameters are varied: valve timing, cylinder pressure sampling period, residual gas fraction, cylinder pressure offset and exhaust gas temperature.