Model-Based Control of the Air Fuel Ratio for Gasoline Direct Injection Engines via Advanced Co-Simulation: An Approach to Reduce the Development Cycle of Engine Control Systems

Nowadays, the precise control of the air fuel ratio (AFR) in spark ignition (SI) engines plays a crucial role in meeting the more and more restrictive standard emissions for the passenger cars and the fuel economy required by the automotive market as well. To attain this demanding goal, the development of an advanced AFR control strategy embedding highly predictive models becomes mandatory for the next generation of electronic control unit (ECU). Conversely, the adoption of more complex control strategies affects the development time of the ECU increasing the time-to-market of new engine models. In this paper to solve the AFR control problem for gasoline direct injection (GDI) and to speed up the design of the entire control system, a gain scheduling PI model-based control strategy is proposed. To this aim, AFR dynamics are modeled via a first order time delay system whose parameters vary strongly with the fresh air mass entering the cylinders. Nonlinear relations have been found to describe the behavior of model parameters in function of air mass. Closed loop performances, when this novel controller is nested in the control loop, are compared to those provided by the classical PI Ziegler–Nichols control action with respect to different cost functions. Model validation as well as the effectiveness of the control design are carried out by means of ECU-1D engine co-simulation environment for a wide range of engine working conditions. The combination in one integrated designing environment of control systems and virtual engine, simulated through high predictive commercial one dimensional code, becomes a high predictive tool for automotive control engineers and enables fast prototyping.