Advances in fuel injection

Engineers from Delphi address drive-circuit modeling and analysis of electronically controlled fuel injectors for heavy-duty diesel engines.

Meeting evolving global diesel emissions requirements is one of the drivers behind the need for increasingly complex diesel-fuel injection technology. This complexity has taken the form of advanced fuel injectors, advanced fuel-injection strategies, and advanced fuel-injector drives, the latter of which varies in circuit topology, component selection, circuit capability, material cost, reliability, and efficiency.

The fuel-injector drive designer is required to develop and evaluate all possible configurations of a system and determine the suitable electronic circuitry that results in the optimal design. The early pre-production development timing typical in this industry often precludes the execution of a thorough mathematical evaluation that considers all potential fuel-injector-drive designs. The absence of this thorough evaluation can lead to suboptimal solutions that negatively impact customer development schedules and drive major design changes late in the development cycle.