A unified approach to engine cylinder pressure reconstruction using time-delay neural networks with crank kinematics or block vibration measurements

Closed-loop combustion control (CLCC) in gasoline engines can improve efficiency, calibration effort, and performance using different fuels. Knowledge of in-cylinder pressures is a key requirement for CLCC. Adaptive cylinder pressure reconstruction offers a realistic alternative to direct sensing, which is otherwise necessary as legislation requires continued reductions in CO2 and exhaust emissions. Direct sensing however is expensive and may not prove adequately robust. A new approach is developed for in-cylinder pressure reconstruction on gasoline engines. The approach uses Time-Delay feed-forward Artificial Neural Networks trained with the standard Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The same approach can be applied to reconstruction via measured crank kinematics obtained from a shaft encoder, or measured engine cylinder block vibrations obtained from a production knock sensor. The basis of the procedure is initially justified by examination of the information content within measured data, which is considered to be equally important as the network architecture and training methodology. Key hypotheses are constructed and tested using data taken from a 3-cylinder (DISI) engine to reveal the influence of the data information content on reconstruction potential. The findings of these hypotheses tests are then used to develop the methodology. The approach is tested by reconstructing cylinder pressure across a wide range of steady-state engine operation using both measured crank kinematics and block accelerations. The results obtained show a very marked improvement over previously published reconstruction accuracy for both crank kinematics and cylinder block vibration based reconstruction using measurements obtained from a multi-cylinder engine. The paper shows that by careful processing of measured engine data, a standard neural network architecture and a standard training algorithm can be used to very accurately reconstruct engine cylinder pressure with high levels of robustness and efficiency

Engine cylinder pressure reconstruction using crank kinematics and recurrently-trained neural networks

A recurrent non-linear autoregressive with exogenous input (NARX) neural network is proposed, and a suitable fully-recurrent training methodology is adapted and tuned, for reconstructing cylinder pressure in multi-cylinder IC engines using measured crank kinematics. This type of indirect sensing is important for cost effective closed-loop combustion control and for On-Board Diagnostics. The challenge addressed is to accurately predict cylinder pressure traces within the cycle under generalisation conditions: i.e. using data not previously seen by the network during training. This involves direct construction and calibration of a suitable inverse crank dynamic model, which owing to singular behaviour at top-dead-centre (TDC), has proved difficult via physical model construction, calibration, and inversion. The NARX architecture is specialised and adapted to cylinder pressure reconstruction, using a fully-recurrent training methodology which is needed because the alternatives are too slow and unreliable for practical network training on production engines. The fully-recurrent Robust Adaptive Gradient Descent (RAGD) algorithm, is tuned initially using synthesised crank kinematics, and then tested on real engine data to assess the reconstruction capability. Real data is obtained from a 1.125 litre, 3-cylinder, in-line, direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine involving synchronised measurements of crank kinematics and cylinder pressure across a range of steady-state speed and load conditions. The paper shows that a RAGD-trained NARX network using both crank velocity and crank acceleration as input information, provides fast and robust training. By using the optimum epoch identified during RAGD training, acceptably accurate cylinder pressures, and especially accurate location-of-peak-pressure, can be reconstructed robustly under generalisation conditions, making it the most practical NARX configuration and recurrent training methodology for use on production engines

Reconstruction of gasoline engine in-cylinder pressures using recurrent neural networks

Knowledge of the pressure inside the combustion chamber of a gasoline engine would provide very useful information regarding the quality and consistency of combustion and allow significant improvements in its control, leading to improved efficiency and refinement. While measurement using incylinder pressure transducers is common in laboratory tests, their use in production engines is very limited due to cost and durability constraints. This thesis seeks to exploit the time series prediction capabilities of recurrent neural networks in order to build an inverse model accepting crankshaft kinematics or cylinder block vibrations as inputs for the reconstruction of in-cylinder pressures. Success in this endeavour would provide information to drive a real time combustion control strategy using only sensors already commonly installed on production engines. A reference data set was acquired from a prototype Ford in-line 3 cylinder direct injected, spark ignited gasoline engine of 1.125 litre swept volume. Data acquired concentrated on low speed (1000-2000 rev/min), low load (10-30 Nm brake torque) test conditions. The experimental work undertaken is described in detail, along with the signal processing requirements to treat the data prior to presentation to a neural network. The primary problem then addressed is the reliable, efficient training of a recurrent neural network to result in an inverse model capable of predicting cylinder pressures from data not seen during the training phase, this unseen data includes examples from speed and load ranges other than those in the training case. The specific recurrent network architecture investigated is the non-linear autoregressive with exogenous inputs (NARX) structure. Teacher forced training is investigated using the reference engine data set before a state of the art recurrent training method (Robust Adaptive Gradient Descent – RAGD) is implemented and the influence of the various parameters surrounding input vectors, network structure and training algorithm are investigated. Optimum parameters for data, structure and training algorithm are identified

A crank-kinematics based engine cylinder pressure reconstruction model

A new inverse model is proposed for reconstructing steady-state and transient engine cylinder pressure using measured crank kinematics. An adaptive nonlinear time-dependent relationship is assumed between windowed-subsections of cylinder pressure and measured crank kinematics in a time-domain format (rather than in crank-angle-domain). This relationship comprises a linear sum of four separate nonlinear functions of crank jerk, acceleration, velocity, and crank angle. Each of these four nonlinear functions is obtained at each time instant by fitting separate m-term Chebychev polynomial expansions, where the total 4m instantaneous expansion coefficients are found using a standard (over-determined) linear least-square solution method. A convergence check on the calibration accuracy shows this initially improves as more Chebychev polynomial terms are used, but with further increase, the over-determined system becomes singular. Optimal accuracy Chebychev expansions are found to be of degree m=4, using 90 or more cycles of engine data to fit the model. To confirm the model accuracy in predictive mode, a defined measure is used, namely the ‘calibration peak pressure error’. This measure allows effective a priori exclusion of occasionally unacceptable predictions. The method is tested using varying speed data taken from a 3-cylinder DISI engine fitted with cylinder pressure sensors, and a high resolution shaft encoder. Using appropriately-filtered crank kinematics (plus the ‘calibration peak pressure error’), the model produces fast and accurate predictions for previously unseen data. Peak pressure predictions are consistently within 6.5% of target, whereas locations of peak pressure are consistently within ± 2.7˚ CA. The computational efficiency makes it very suitable for real-time implementation

The application of black box models to combustion processes in the internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine has been under considerable pressure during the last few years. The publics growing sensitivity for emissions and resource wastage have led to increasingly stringent legislation. Engine manufacturers need to invest significant monetary funds and engineering resources in order to meet the designated regulations. In recent years, reductions in emissions and fuel consumption could be achieved with advanced engine technologies such as exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), variable geometry turbines (VGT), variable valve trains (VVT), variable compression ratios (VCR) or extended aftertreatment systems such as diesel particulate filters (DPF) or NOx traps or selective catalytic reduction (SCR) implementations. These approaches are characterised by a highly non-linear behaviour with an increasing demand for close-loop control. In consequence, successful controller design becomes an important part of meeting legislation requirements and acceptable standards. At the same time, the close-loop control requires additional monitoring information and, especially in the field of combustion control, this is a challenging task. Existing sensors in heavy-duty diesel applications for incylinder pressure detection enable the feedback of combustion conditions. However, high maintenance costs and reliability issues currently cancel this method out for mass-production vehicles. Methods of in-cylinder condition reconstruction for real-time applications have been presented over the last few decades. The methodical restrictions of these approaches are proving problematic. Hence, this work presents a method utilising artificial neural networks for the prediction of combustion-related engine parameters. The application of networks for the prediction of parameters such as emission formations of NOx and Particulate Matters will be shown initially. This thesis shows the importance of correct training and validation data choice together with a comprehensive network input set. In addition, an application of an efficient and accurate plant model as a support tool for an engine fuel-path controller is presented together with an efficient test data generation method. From these findings, an artificial neural network structure is developed for the prediction of in-cylinder combustion conditions. In-cylinder pressure and temperature provide valuable information about the combustion efficiency and quality. This work presents a structure that can predict these parameters from other more simple measurable variables within the engine auxiliaries. The structure is tested on data generated from a GT-Power simulation model and with a Caterpillar C6.6 heavy-duty diesel engine

Review of sensing methodologies for estimation of combustion metrics

For reduction of engine-out emissions and improvement of fuel economy, closed-loop control of the combustion process has been explored and documented by many researchers. In the closed-loop control, the engine control parameters are optimized according to the estimated instantaneous combustion metrics provided by the combustion sensing process. Combustion sensing process is primarily composed of two aspects: combustion response signal acquisition and response signal processing. As a number of different signals have been employed as the response signal and the signal processing techniques can be different, this paper did a review work concerning the two aspects: combustion response signals and signal processing techniques. In-cylinder pressure signal was not investigated as one of the response signals in this paper since it has been studied and documented in many publications and also due to its high cost and inconvenience in the application

In-Cylinder Pressure Estimation from Rotational Speed Measurements via Extended Kalman Filter

Real-time estimation of the in-cylinder pressure of combustion engines is crucial to detect failures and improve the performance of the engine control system. A new estimation scheme is proposed based on the Extended Kalman Filter, which exploits measurements of the engine rotational speed provided by a standard phonic wheel sensor. The main novelty lies in a parameterization of the combustion pressure, which is generated by averaging experimental data collected in different operating points. The proposed approach is validated on real data from a turbocharged compression ignition engine, including both nominal and off-nominal working conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed technique accurately reconstructs the pressure profile, featuring a fit performance index exceeding 90% most of the time. Moreover, it can track changes in the engine operating conditions as well as detect the presence of cylinder-to-cylinder variations

Engine cylinder pressure reconstruction using crank kinematics, block vibrations, and time-delay neural networks

Time-delay feed-forward Artificial Neural Networks are examined for gasoline engine cylinder pressure reconstruction using both measured crank kinematics obtained from a shaft encoder, and measured engine cylinder block vibrations obtained from a production knock sensor. Initially, the study focuses on the information content associated with measured data, which is considered to be of equal importance to the particular network architecture and the training methodology. Several hypotheses are constructed, which when tested, reveal the influence of the data information content on the reconstruction potential and limitations. These hypotheses are tested on real data from a 3-cylinder (DISI) engine. Three distinct ideas emerge through this testing process, which are combined to produce a single pressure reconstruction methodology. Reconstruction results obtained via this methodology, applied to crank kinematics associated with steady-state engine operation, show a marked improvement over previously published reconstruction accuracy. Moreover, in steady-state engine operation, the application of this methodology to acceleration measurements of cylinder block vibration, obtained from a knock sensor, show very significant improvements over previous attempts. But the direct application of this same reconstruction methodology to transient engine operation, proves to be problematic. However, a novel generalisation of the approach in the form of a time-dependent feed-forward neural network is proposed and the required adaptation made to the use of the Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm. This time-dependent approach has been tested under limited transient conditions and shown in the thesis to give good results, therefore offering considerable potential for use with real engine operation. Overall, the thesis shows that by careful processing of measured engine data, standard neural network architectures and standard training algorithms can be used to reconstruct engine cylinder pressure

Neural network control of nonstrict feedback and nonaffine nonlinear discrete-time systems with application to engine control

In this dissertation, neural networks (NN) approximate unknown nonlinear functions in the system equations, unknown control inputs, and cost functions for two different classes of nonlinear discrete-time systems. Employing NN in closed-loop feedback systems requires that weight update algorithms be stable...Controllers are developed and applied to a nonlinear, discrete-time system of equations for a spark ignition engine model to reduce the cyclic dispersion of heat release --Abstract, page iv

Development of a methodology for the diagnosis of internal combustion engines using non-invasive measurements based on the use of interpretable neural networks applicable to databases with multiple annotators

Pressure is one of the essential variables that give information for engine condition and monitoring. Direct recording of this signal is complex and invasive, while the angular velocity can be measured easily. Nonetheless, the challenge is to predict the cylinder pressure using the shaft kinematics accurately. On the other hand, the increasing popularity of crowdsourcing platforms, i.e., Amazon Mechanical Turk, changes how datasets for supervised learning are built. In these cases, instead of having datasets labeled by one source (which is supposed to be an expert who provided the absolute gold standard), databases holding multiple annotators are provided. However, most state-of-the-art methods devoted to learning from multiple experts assume that the labeler's behavior is homogeneous across the input feature space. Besides, independence constraints are imposed on annotators' outputs. This document presents a Regularized Chained Deep Neural Network to deal with classification tasks from multiple annotators. In this thesis, we develop 2 strategies aiming to avoid intrusive techniques that are commonly used to diagnose Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). The first consist of a time-delay neural network (TDNN), interpreted as a finite pulse response (FIR) filter to estimate the in-cylinder pressure of a single-cylinder ICE from fluctuations in shaft angular velocity. The experiments are conducted over data obtained from an ICE operating in 12 different states by changing the angular velocity and load. The TDNN's delay is adjusted to get the highest possible correlation-based score. Our methodology can predict pressure with an R2>0.9, avoiding complicated pre-processing steps. The second technique, termed RCDNN, jointly predicts the ground truth label and the annotators' performance from input space samples. In turn, RCDNN codes interdependencies among the experts by analyzing the layers' weights and includes l1, l2, and Monte-Carlo Dropout-based regularizers to deal with the overfitting issue in deep learning models. Obtained results (using both simulated and real-world annotators) demonstrate that RCDNN can deal with multi-labelers scenarios for classification tasks, defeating state-of-the-art techniques.La presión es una de las variables esenciales que dan información para el estado del motor y su monitorización. El registro directo de esta señal es complejo e invasivo, mientras que la velocidad angular puede medirse fácilmente. No obstante, el reto consiste en predecir la presión del cilindro utilizando la cinemática del eje con precisión. Por otro lado, la creciente popularidad de las plataformas de crowdsourcing, por ejemplo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, cambia la forma de construir conjuntos de datos para el aprendizaje supervisado. En estos casos, en lugar de tener conjuntos de datos etiquetados por una sola fuente (que se supone que es un experto que proporcionó el estándar de oro absoluto), se proporcionan bases de datos con múltiples anotadores. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los métodos de vanguardia dedicados al aprendizaje a partir de múltiples expertos suponen que el comportamiento del etiquetador es homogéneo en todo el espacio de características de entrada. Además, se imponen restricciones de independencia a los resultados de los anotadores. Este documento presenta una Red Neuronal Profunda Encadenada Regularizada para abordar tareas de clasificación a partir de múltiples anotadores. En esta tesis, desarrollamos dos estrategias con el objetivo de evitar las técnicas intrusivas que se utilizan habitualmente para diagnosticar motores de combustión interna (ICE). La primera consiste en una red neuronal de retardo temporal (TDNN), interpretada como un filtro de respuesta de pulso finito (FIR) para estimar la presión en el cilindro de un ICE de un solo cilindro a partir de las fluctuaciones de la velocidad angular del eje. Los experimentos se realizan sobre datos obtenidos de un ICE que opera en 12 estados diferentes cambiando la velocidad angular y la carga. El retardo de la TDNN se ajusta para obtener la mayor puntuación posible basada en la correlación. Nuestra metodología puede predecir la presión con un R2>0,9, evitando complicados pasos de preprocesamiento.MaestríaMagíster en Ingeniería EléctricaContent 1 Introduction 10 1.1 Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.2 Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1.3 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.3.1 General objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.3.2 Specific objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2 TDNN-based Engine In-cylinder Pressure Estimation from Shaft Velocity Spectral Representation 18 2.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2.1 Time Delay Neural Network fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2.2 Harmonic prediction performance based on Magnitude-Squared Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.3 Experimental Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.3.1 Engine Measurements, Data Acquisition, and Preprocessing . . . . . 22 2.3.2 Pressure signal estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.4 Results and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.5 Conclusions and future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 3 Master Thesis: Content 3 Regularized Chained Deep Neural Network Classifier for Multiple Annotators 37 3.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.2 Materials and Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.2.1 Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.2.2 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.3 Experimental set-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.3.1 Tested datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.3.2 RCDNN detailed architecture and training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.3.3 Results and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.3.4 Introducing spammers and malicious annotators . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3.3.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4 Final Remarks 58 4.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.1.1 TDNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.1.2 RCDNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.2.1 TDNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.2.2 RCDNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.3 Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6