Development of Electrical-Electronic Controls for a Gasoline Direct Injection Compression Ignition Engine

Donald V. Johnson; Gregory Roth; Andrew Fedewa; Jeremy Kraenzlein; Xiaojian Yang

doi:10.4271/2016-01-0614

Delphi is developing a new combustion technology called Gasoline Direct-injection Compression Ignition (GDCI), which has shown promise for substantially improving fuel economy. This new technology is able to reuse some of the controls common to traditional spark ignition (SI) engines; however, it also requires several new sensors and actuators, some of which are not common to traditional SI engines. Since this is new technology development, the required hardware set has continued to evolve over the course of the project.

In order to support this development work, a highly capable and flexible electronic control system is necessary. Integrating all of the necessary functions into a single controller, or two, would require significant up-front controller hardware development, and would limit the adaptability of the electronic controls to the evolving requirements for GDCI. It is preferable to have a flexible electronic controls architecture that can support the addition, deletion and modification of sensors and/or actuators, and allow these changes to be made rapidly.

In addition to the necessary controls interface hardware, the project also requires the ability to rapidly develop, implement and test the algorithms necessary to control the combustion process. For that purpose, a Rapid Algorithm Development (RAD) environment was designed and utilized.

Delphi has implemented this electronic control system for both a start cart engine (described in more detail in later section) and on a demonstration vehicle to support the control algorithm development for the GDCI combustion process. This paper describes the philosophy, development and vehicle implementation of the GDCI engine electrical/electronic controls, including the vehicle adaptations required.

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Development of Electrical-Electronic Controls for a Gasoline Direct Injection Compression Ignition Engine 2016-01-0614

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