Air-to-Fuel and Dual-Fuel Ratio Control of an Internal Combustion Engine

Air-to-fuel (A/F) ratio is the mass ratio of the air-to-fuel mixture trapped inside a cylinder before combustion begins, and it affects engine emissions, fuel economy, and other performances. Using an A/F ratio and dual-fuel ratio control oriented engine model, a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) sliding mode control scheme is used to simultaneously control the mass flow rate of both port fuel injection (PFI) and direct injection (DI) systems. The control target is to regulate the A/F ratio at a desired level (e.g., at stoichiometric) and fuel ratio (ratio of PFI fueling vs. total fueling) to any desired level between zero and one. A MIMO sliding mode controller was designed with guaranteed stability to drive the system A/F and fuel ratios to the desired target under various air flow disturbances. The performance of the sliding mode controller was compared with a baseline multi-loop PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controller through simulations and showed improvements over the baseline controller. Finally, the engine model and proposed sliding mode controller are implemented into a Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulator and a target engine control module, and HIL simulation is conducted to validate the developed controller for potential implementation in an automotive engine.