Setting suitable requirements for a 1-cylinder research engine control system

Abstract

The combustion in modern engines are controlled by electronic systems, with the electronic control unit, ECU, as the main component to control and give commands to the system. The ECU is divided into hardware and software. Being independent of complex, licensed and commercial software and hardware is crucial for experimental research in order to eliminate sources of errors and to minimize the number of parameters that influences the accuracy of the tests performed. The ECU interact with several other components and need to be compatible with those. This study will investigate what parameters that are crucial in order to control a high pressure direct injection system for a one-cylinder test engine at the Division of Combustion and Propulsion Systems at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden. The study will investigate how the current system works in order to put specifications of the new system including sample rate, current and voltage values, frequency of the signals and threshold values for different commands given by the ECU. Today, the ECU used at this specific engine has a licensed software that is designed for and restricted to the hardware it is used in. It is made by a manufacturer that does not let the user edit the code or functionality of the software and therefore the hardware gets restricted as well. The study will set up requirement specifications in order to be able to and give recommendations of how to design a new control system for the 1-cylinder research engine.