Predictive Control of HCCI Engines Using Physical Models

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is a promising internal combustion engine concept. It holds promise of combining low emission levels with high efficiency. However, as ignition timing in HCCI operation lacks direct actuation and is highly sensitive to operating conditions and disturbances, robust closed-loop control is necessary. To facilitate control design and allow for porting of both models and the resulting controllers between different engines, physics-based mathematical models of HCCI are of interest.

This thesis presents work on a physical model of HCCI including cylinder wall temperature and evaluates predictive controllers based on linearizations of the model. The model was derived using first principles modeling and is given on a cycle-to-cycle basis. Measurement data including cylinder wall temperature measurements was used for calibration and validation of the model. A predictive controller for combined control of work output and combustion phasing was designed and evaluated in simulation. The resulting controller was validated on a real engine. The last part of the work was an experimental evaluation of predictive combustion phasing control. The control performance was evaluated in terms of response time and steady-state output variance.