Nonlinear Adaptive Control of Exhaust Gas Recirculation for Large Diesel Engines

A nonlinear adaptive controller is proposed for the exhaust gas recirculation system on large two-stroke diesel engines. The control design is based on a control oriented model of the nonlinear dynamics at hand that incorporates fuel flow and turbocharger speed changes as known disturbances to the exhaust gas recirculation. The paper provides proof of exponential stability for closed loop control of the model given. Difficulties in the system include that certain disturbance levels will make a desired setpoint in $O_2$ unreachable, for reasons of the physics of the system, and it is proven that the proposed control will make the system converge exponentially to the best achievable state. Simulation examples confirm convergence and good disturbance rejection over relevant operational ranges of the engine.© 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. Locked until 2017-01-01

Adaptive feedforward control of exhaust recirculation in large diesel engines

Environmental concern has led the International Maritime Organization to restrict NO$_x$ emissions from marine diesel engines. Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems have been introduced in order to comply to the new standards. Traditional fixed-gain feedback methods are not able to control the EGR system adequately in engine loading transients so alternative methods are needed. This paper presents the design, convergence proofs and experimental validation of an adaptive feedforward controller that significantly improves the performance in loading transients. First the control concept is generalized to a class of first order Hammerstein systems with sensor delay and exponentially converging bounds of the control error are proven analytically. It is then shown how to apply the method to the EGR system of a two-stroke crosshead diesel engine. The controller is validated by closed loop simulation with a mean-value engine model, on an engine test bed and on a vessel operating at sea. A significant reduction of smoke formation during loading transients is observed both visually and with an opacity sensor