Modeling, simulation and control of an automotive gasoline engine

Innovative automotive gasoline engines are equipped with new actuators, such as the Variable Valve Timing (VVT), besides the traditional electronic throttle (ETC) and Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR). All these actuators can be used to optimize the engine performance in terms of reduced fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. In turn, their presence makes the control of the engine a difficult task due to the intrinsic multi-variable nature of the problem. In the first part of this paper, a control-oriented model of a gasoline engine equipped with these devices is presented and validated with real data. This model, and the corresponding dynamic simulator, are then used in the synthesis of the control strategy including both static maps, as in most of the nowadays industrial applications, and a dynamic compensator designed with Model Predictive Control. Simulation results illustrate the benefits of this approach.