Cylinder pressure based combustion phase optimization and control in spark-ignited engines

Efficiency and emissions of spark-ignited engines are significantly affected by combustion phase which can usually be indicated by crank angle of 50% mass burnt (CA50). Managing combustion phase at the optimal value at which the maximal efficiency can be achieved is a challenging issue due to the cyclic variations of combustion process. This paper addresses this issue in two loops: CA50 set-point optimization (outer loop) and set-point tracking (inner loop) by controlling spark advance (SA). Extremum seeking approach maximizing thermal efficiency is employed in the CA50 set-point optimization. A proportionalintegral (PI) controller is adopted to make the moving average value of CA50 tracking the optimal CA50 set-point determined in the outer loop. Moreover, in order to obtain fast responses at steady and transient operations, feed-forward maps are designed for extremum seeking controller and PI controller, respectively. Finally, experimental validations are conducted on a six-cylinder gasoline at steady and transient operations to show the effectiveness of proposed control scheme.