Development of teaching materials for SI engine control exercise

With the problem of environmental pollution and energy depletion in recent years, a control technology which improves the performance of automobile engine is demanded. Therefore, there is a real need for cultivating human resources capable of understanding both the automobile engine and the control technology. This paper presents the development of teaching materials for Spark Ignition (SI) engine control exercise. The purpose of this work is for students to understand the engine characteristics and the actual engine control system using an engine simulator and hardware in the loop simulator (HILS). These teaching materials consist of a personal computer for designing control logic, a real-time arithmetic board, an experimental ECU, and an engine test bench. This work developed a simulation system in order to understand the engine characteristic of relation between the engine revolution, the ignition timing, and the throttle angel. Moreover, an engine starting control system of design base with ignition timing controller that changes the integral action parameter of PID controller is designed, and a real-time environment for engine is developed. The engine real-time simulation environment can load the designed control logic and the engine model into the real-time arithmetic board to run the real-time simulation and to confirm the characteristics of control parameters. In the future, when the engine simulator is connected with engine test bench and ECU, engine real-time simulation can be realized.