Abstract
High resolution real time heat release analysis will become increasingly important in the future development of engine control systems. The increased demands on efficiency and emissions will put high demands on future engine control. Future engine concepts, for example the HCCI engine concept might crave cylinder pressure based Closed-Loop Combustion Control (CLCC). The analysis of cylinder pressure is a relatively computationally expensive task that is difficult to implement in existing engine controllers due to the real time demands. This paper describes an approach to obtain such a high speed heat release analysis. The described system could act as a platform for further feedback control experiments. An experimental setup is put together. The heat release algorithm is then developed using MATLAB and SIMULINK. The emerging environment will serve as a prototyping system that can be used for further development of advanced cylinder pressure based feedback control strategies. The performance of the developed algorithm/system is examined in a simulated engine environment. The heart of the system is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), an FPGA is best described as an reconfigurable Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). The usage of an FPGA gives the possibility of very high throughput and very low delay time and jitter of the final system. This system could of course also be developed using a normal Commersial Of The Shelf (COTS) processor and a Real Time Operating System (RTOS). The high performance that would be needed to calculate the heat release in the desired time in a multi cylinder engine would however put high demands on the used processor; hence the price of the processor might make the system too expensive, the FPGA describes an alternative approach.
Keywords: ASIC, closed-loop engine control, FPGA, heat release analysis, virtual sensor.