Successful development of automotive engine control
with FORCES PRO

A team from the Institute of Automatic Control and the Institute for Combustion Engines at RWTH Aachen University investigated advanced engine control algorithms within a 2-years research project. They successfully deployed Forces Pro to rapidly prototype different Nonlinear Model Predictive Control algorithms for the air path control of a gasoline engine. To evaluate the suitability of the optimization-based control algorithm, a complex air path system consisting of two turbocharger stages and exhaust gas recirculation was analyzed.

The challenging characteristics of the system, such as strong nonlinearity, multiple-input, multiple-output and disturbance sensitivity could be handled despite the small available computation time in the milli-second range. The Embotech software allows to exploit the full potential of the engine architecture, which enables a reduction of CO2-emissions by 17%. At the same time, the control algorithm can be automatically generated from the problem description and can be used without change for simulation, prototyping, and production. This property also permits the engineer to change design parameters during test-drives allowing for truly rapid prototyping.

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