Contribution of Fuel Transport Lag and Statistical Perturbation in Combustion to Oscillation of SI Engine Speed at Idle

Periodic oscillations of the speed of SI engine with MPI system at idle observed in the steady state and in the converging process after the inditial increase of load were investigated. These non-steady phenomena are the self-excitations of the closed-loop system induced by the lag factors inherent to the system such as the manifold charging delay and the fuel metering and transport lag and by the nonlinear factors such as the sensitivity of the torque to the equivalence ratio. But, even in the cases where the lags and the nonlinearity are insufficient, continuous oscillations with large amplitude are observed in the actual engine. They can be explained by introducing the concept of external perturbation induced by the combustion fluctuation. Disturbance prevents the phase lag in the system from converging, resulting in the continuation of oscillation.