Review of air fuel ratio prediction and control methods

Air pollution is one of main challenging issues nowadays that researchers have been trying to address.The emissions of vehicle engine exhausts are responsible for 50 percent of air pollution. Different types of emissions emit from vehicles including carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, NOX, and so on. There is a tendency to develop strategies of engine control which work in a fast way. Accomplishing this task will result in a decrease in emissions which coupled with the fuel composition can bring about the best performance of the vehicle engine.Controlling the Air-Fuel Ratio (AFR) is necessary, because the AFR has an enormous impact on the effectiveness of the fuel and reduction of emissions.This paper is aimed at reviewing the recent studies on the prediction and control of the AFR, as a bulk of research works with different approaches, was conducted in this area.These approaches include both classical and modern methods, namely Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Fuzzy Logic, and Neuro-Fuzzy Systems are described in this paper.The strength and the weakness of individual approaches will be discussed at length

Parameter Identification of Nonlinear System on Combustion Engine Based MVEM using PEM

In four-stroke engine injection system, often called spark ignition (SI) engine, the air-fuel ratio (AFR) is taken from the measurement of lambda sensor in the exhaust. This sensor does not directly describe how much AFR in the combustion chamber due to the large transport delay. Therefore, the lambda sensor is used only as a feedback in AFR control "correction", not as the "main" control. The purpose of this research is to identify the parameters of the non-linear system in SI engines to produce AFR estimator. The AFR estimator is expected to be used as a feedback of the main "AFR" control system. The process of identifying the parameters using the Gauss-Newton method, due to its rapid computation to Achieve convergence, is based on prediction error minimization (PEM). The models of AFR estimator is an open-loop system without a universal exhaust gas oxygen (UEGO) sensors as feedback, called a virtual AFR sensor. The high price of UEGO sensors makes the virtual AFR sensor can be a practical solution to be applied in AFR control. The model in this research is based on the mean value engine models (MVEM) with some modifications. The research dataset was taken from a Hyundai Verna 2002 with the additional UEGO type of lambda sensors. The throttle opening angle (input) is played by stepping on the gas pedal and the signal to the injector (input) is set to a certain quantity to produce the AFR (output) value read by the UEGO sensor. This research produces an open loop estimator model or AFR virtual sensors with normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) = 0.06831 = 6.831%

ADAPTIVE MODEL BASED COMBUSTION PHASING CONTROL FOR MULTI FUEL SPARK IGNITION ENGINES

This research describes a physics-based control-oriented feed-forward model, combined with cylinder pressure feedback, to regulate combustion phasing in a spark-ignition engine operating on an unknown mix of fuels. This research may help enable internal combustion engines that are capable of on-the-fly adaptation to a wide range of fuels. These engines could; (1) facilitate a reduction in bio-fuel processing, (2) encourage locally-appropriate bio-fuels to reduce transportation, (3) allow new fuel formulations to enter the market with minimal infrastructure, and (4) enable engine adaptation to pump-to-pump fuel variations. These outcomes will help make bio-fuels cost-competitive with other transportation fuels, lessen dependence on traditional sources of energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles; all of which are pivotal societal issues. Spark-ignition engines are equipped with a large number of control actuators to satisfy fuel economy targets and maintain regulated emissions compliance. The increased control flexibility also allows for adaptability to a wide range of fuel compositions, while maintaining efficient operation when input fuel is altered. Ignition timing control is of particular interest because it is the last control parameter prior to the combustion event, and significantly influences engine efficiency and emissions. Although Map-based ignition timing control and calibration routines are state of art, they become cumbersome when the number of control degrees of freedom increases are used in the engine. The increased system complexity motivates the use of model-based methods to minimize product development time and ensure calibration flexibility when the engine is altered during the design process. A closed loop model based ignition timing control algorithm is formulated with: 1) a feed forward fuel type sensitive combustion model to predict combustion duration from spark to 50% mass burned; 2) two virtual fuel property observers for octane number and laminar flame speed feedback; 3) an adaptive combustion phasing target model that is able to self-calibrate for wide range of fuel sources input. The proposed closed loop algorithm is experimentally validated in real time on the dynamometer. Satisfactory results are observed and conclusions are made that the closed loop approach is able to regulate combustion phasing for multi fuel adaptive SI engines

Output Feedback Controller for Operation of Spark Ignition Engines at Lean Conditions Using Neural Networks

Spark ignition (SI) engines operating at very lean conditions demonstrate significant nonlinear behavior by exhibiting cycle-to-cycle bifurcation of heat release. Past literature suggests that operating an engine under such lean conditions can significantly reduce NO emissions by as much as 30% and improve fuel efficiency by as much as 5%-10%. At lean conditions, the heat release per engine cycle is not close to constant, as it is when these engines operate under stoichiometric conditions where the equivalence ratio is 1.0. A neural network controller employing output feedback has shown ability in simulation to reduce the nonlinear cyclic dispersion observed under lean operating conditions. This neural network (NN) output controller consists of three NNs: a) an NN observer to estimate the states of the engine such as total fuel and air; b) a second NN for generating virtual input; and c) a third NN for generating actual control input. The uniform ultimate boundedness of all closed-loop signals is demonstrated by using the Lyapunov analysis without using the separation principle. Persistency of the excitation condition, the certainty equivalence principle, and the linearity in the unknown parameter assumptions are also relaxed. The controller is implemented for a research engine as a program running on an embeddable PC that communicates with the engine through a custom hardware interface, and the results are similar to those observed in simulation. Experimental results at an equivalence ratio of 0.77 show a drop in NO emissions by around 98% from stoichiometric levels with an improvement of fuel efficiency by 5%. A 30% drop in unburned hydrocarbons from uncontrolled case is observed at this equivalence ratio of 0.77. Similar performance was observed with the controller on a different engine

A STUDY OF MODEL-BASED CONTROL STRATEGY FOR A GASOLINE TURBOCHARGED DIRECT INJECTION SPARK IGNITED ENGINE

To meet increasingly stringent fuel economy and emissions legislation, more advanced technologies have been added to spark-ignition (SI) engines, thus exponentially increase the complexity and calibration work of traditional map-based engine control. To achieve better engine performance without introducing significant calibration efforts and make the developed control system easily adapt to future engines upgrades and designs, this research proposes a model-based optimal control system for cycle-by-cycle Gasoline Turbocharged Direct Injection (GTDI) SI engine control, which aims to deliver the requested torque output and operate the engine to achieve the best achievable fuel economy and minimum emission under wide range of engine operating conditions. This research develops a model-based ignition timing prediction strategy for combustion phasing (crank angle of fifty percent of the fuel burned, CA50) control. A control-oriented combustion model is developed to predict burn duration from ignition timing to CA50. Using the predicted burn duration, the ignition timing needed for the upcoming cycle to track optimal target CA50 is calculated by a dynamic ignition timing prediction algorithm. A Recursive-Least-Square (RLS) with Variable Forgetting Factor (VFF) based adaptation algorithm is proposed to handle operating-point-dependent model errors caused by inherent errors resulting from modeling assumptions and limited calibration points, which helps to ensure the proper performance of model-based ignition timing prediction strategy throughout the entire engine lifetime. Using the adaptive combustion model, an Adaptive Extended Kalman Filter (AEKF) based CA50 observer is developed to provide filtered CA50 estimation from cyclic variations for the closed-loop combustion phasing control. An economic nonlinear model predictive controller (E-NMPC) based GTDI SI engine control system is developed to simultaneously achieve three objectives: tracking the requested net indicated mean effective pressure (IMEPn), minimizing the SFC, and reducing NOx emissions. The developed E-NMPC engine control system can achieve the above objectives by controlling throttle position, IVC timing, CA50, exhaust valve opening (EVO) timing, and wastegate position at the same time without violating engine operating constraints. A control-oriented engine model is developed and integrated into the E-NMPC to predict future engine behaviors. A high-fidelity 1-D GT-POWER engine model is developed and used as the plant model to tune and validate the developed control system. The performance of the entire model-based engine control system is examined through the software-in-the-loop (SIL) simulation using on-road vehicle test data

In -cylinder combustion -based virtual emissions sensing

The development of a real-time, on-board measurement of exhaust emissions from heavy-duty engines would offer tremendous advantages in on-board diagnostics and engine control. In the absence of suitable measurement hardware, an alternative approach is the development of software-based predictive approaches. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using in-cylinder pressure-based variables as the inputs to predictive neural networks that are then used to predict engine-out exhaust gas emissions. Specifically, a large steady-state engine operation data matrix provides the necessary information for training a successful predictive network while at the same time eliminating errors produced by the dispersive and time-delay effects of the emissions measurement system which includes the exhaust system, the dilution tunnel, and the emissions analyzers. The steady-state training conditions allow for the correlation of time-averaged in-cylinder combustion variables to the engine-out gaseous emissions. A back-propagation neural network is then capable of learning the relationships between these variables and the measured gaseous emissions with the ability to interpolate between steady-state points in the matrix. The networks were then validated using the transient Federal Test Procedure cycle and in-cylinder combustion parameters gathered in real time through the use of an acquisition system based on a digital signal processor. The predictive networks for NOx and CO 2 proved highly successful while those for HC and CO were not as effective. Problems with the HC and CO networks included very low measured levels and validation data that fell beyond the training matrix boundary during transient engine operation