Advanced model-based closed-loop combustion control strategies with combustion rate shaping

Combustion rate shaping (CRS) is an advanced closed-loop concept which controls the crank-angle resolved combustion trace by adapting the fuel injection profile. The thermodynamic potential of this concept to enable real-time combustion control independent of fuel property variations, injector drift, cylinder tolerances, or changing air-path boundary conditions has already been demonstrated. The highest benefit of this control concept is achieved when it is directly applied on the engine control unit (ECU) in combination with an in-cylinder pressure measurement. This enables online optimization and adaption of the fuel- and air-path settings to the fuel used during vehicle operation. Therefore, the development of a CRS concept with real-time capability has been the main focus so far. To ensure a robust online real-time combustion control, a key development step was the identification of control variables that describe the entire combustion process and only minimally influence each other. For this purpose, the combustion phasing, the combustion gradient and the indicated mean effective pressure have been determined as parameters for the feedback control. However, the stringent requirements for higher efficiencies, emission robustness and combustion noise necessitate the extension of the CRS control concept. Therefore, in this work, the CRS control concept is extended with the aim of realizing a combustion with constant volume pressure increase to the peak firing pressure limit to achieve highest efficiency. In addition, intelligent control of the fuel injection profile is to be used to achieve a combustion temperature for lowest possible NOx raw emissions and a robust combustion noise excitation limitation. The optimized control strategy is implemented on a heavy-duty single cylinder engine test bench using a Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) system, and the control performance is demonstrated.