Virtual Engine, Controls, and Calibration Development in Automated Co-Simulation Environment 2016-01-0090

Increasingly advanced engines are having high degrees of flux in design, hardware, and requirement changes throughout the development process from initial design intent to production, all occurring at various points in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Boosting, downsizing, various exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) schemes, variable valve timing/lift (VVT/VVL), and direct injection are part of new engine designs. These are being coupled with 6-10 speed transmission or electric motors for increasing overall efficiency while maintaining performance. Development and calibration of the control systems required to extract the best possible performance of these applied technologies is becoming a complex and resource consuming task when time, budget, and test beds become limited. Therefore, an equally rapid means to thoroughly test new engine designs, new algorithms and optimize calibrations is required. A system is presented to demonstrate this process, beginning with a detailed Gamma Technologies (GT) engine plant that has lumped volumes for fast running and validated for accuracy, then coupled to Simulink virtual control units for cosimulation. Through a secondary Simulink interface with Orion, a procedure is set up to determine engine and actuator boundaries, with the resulting data combined with calibration surface information from the virtual control units to determine and execute a final Design of Experiment (DOE) test sequence that will generate proper data for optimizing a calibration. Lastly, using a Matlab Graphical User Interface (GUI), any predefined or user defined steady state or transient test sequence can be executed with engine and vehicle plant feedback for validation.