Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

SAE TECHNICAL
PAPER SERIES 2004-01-1458

Determining TDC Position Using Symmetry

and Other Methods
Ylva Nilsson and Lars Eriksson
Vehicular Systems, ISY
Linköping University

Reprinted From: Modeling of Spark Ignition Engines

(SP-1830)

2004 SAE World Congress

Detroit, Michigan
March 8-11, 2004

400 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Tel: (724) 776-4841 Fax: (724) 776-5760 Web: www.sae.org
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of SAE.

For permission and licensing requests contact:

SAE Permissions
400 Commonwealth Drive
Warrendale, PA 15096-0001-USA
Email: permissions@sae.org
Fax: 724-772-4891
Tel: 724-772-4028

For multiple print copies contact:

SAE Customer Service

Tel: 877-606-7323 (inside USA and Canada)
Tel: 724-776-4970 (outside USA)
Fax: 724-776-1615
Email: CustomerService@sae.org

ISBN 0-7680-1319-4
Copyright © 2004 SAE International

Positions and opinions advanced in this paper are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of SAE.
The author is solely responsible for the content of the paper. A process is available by which discussions
will be printed with the paper if it is published in SAE Transactions.

Persons wishing to submit papers to be considered for presentation or publication by SAE should send the
manuscript or a 300 word abstract of a proposed manuscript to: Secretary, Engineering Meetings Board, SAE.

Printed in USA
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018
Determining TDC Position Using Symmetry
and Other Methods
Copyright © 2004 SAE International
ABSTRACT
It is important to determine the phasing of a measured cylinder
pressure trace and crank angle with high accuracy. The reason is
that erroneous determination of the position of TDC is a major
error source when calculating properties such as heat release
etc. A common way to determine the TDC position is to study
motored cycles. Heat transfer makes the task more complicated,
since it shifts the position of the maximum pressure away from
TDC.
In this paper a new method for determining the TDC po-
sition is proposed that does not require any additional sensors
other than a cylinder pressure sensor and an incremental en-
coder. The idea is to find a point that the cylinder pressure
from a motored cycle is symmetric around, since the volume is
close to symmetric on either side of TDC. The new method and
four published methods are tested and evaluated. Cylinder pres-
sure data used for comparison are from simulations of a SAAB
Variable Compression engine. The investigation shows that the
methods have an error that is in the range of 0.1◦ or less, but are
sensitive to errors in geometry and heat transfer information.
The symmetry method is less sensitive to these errors than most
of the other methods, and is not affected by an offset or gain
error in the cylinder pressure signal. It is also the least sensitive
method with respect to noise.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is very important to have a correct calibration of the crank
angle when making a heat release analysis. Improper crank an-
gle phasing can lead to substantial differences in heat release in
both shape and size, even though the TDC setting error is appar-
ently small [1, 2]. An error of 0.1◦ or less is often acceptable.
To enhance the calibration much further, additional models of
crank elasticities are needed.
Cylinder pressures from motored cycles include information
about crank angle phasing. Pressure maximum occurs close to
TDC, and therefore gives a rather good hint of how to calibrate
1
2004-01-1458
Ylva Nilsson and Lars Eriksson
Vehicular Systems, ISY
Linköping University
the crank angle. Unfortunately pressure maximum and TDC do
not coincide, due to heat transfer, crevice effects and blow-by.
Instead pressure maximum occurs a bit earlier.
In the literature there are numerous of methods that cali-
brate the crank angle e.g. [3], [4] and [5]. Here, a new method
is presented and compared with four published methods. The
methods are all based on motored pressure, but differ in other
aspects. The methods are applied to simulated engine cycles
from a SAAB Variable Compression (SVC) engine [6].
2 METHODS
In this paper, five different methods are investigated. The first
method is the fastest and simplest. It gives an indication of the
crank angle versus pressure phasing. Due to its simplicity it is
often used as a first shot. It is here used to determine whether
a method works or not. If a method produces an estimate of
the phase angle with an error that is smaller than that of method
I, the method is considered to work. If the error is greater than
that of method I, there is no point in using the more complicated
method and it is therefore considered malfunctioning.
Method II is a new method. The idea is to search for sym-
metry in the pressure curve. Method III [7] looks at the poly-
tropic exponent, and uses Woschni’s heat transfer correlation to
compensate for heat losses. Parameters are adjusted based on
a statistical investigation. Method IV [8] uses a correlation be-
tween IMEP, the maximum cylinder pressure and the phase lag.
Engine cycle simulations are used to adjust the model parame-
ters.
Method V [3] compares the calculated polytropic exponent
at the inflection points when TDC is set to the position of the
pressure maximum, with the calculated polytropic exponent at
the inflection points when TDC is set to an estimated position
of TDC.
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

35
Method I – Pressure maximum Cylinder pressure
Left region
Right region
Method I uses solely the cylinder pressure signal. Under the 30 HT compensated curve

assumption that the ratio of specific heats γ is constant, and

that there is neither heat transfer nor crevice flows, the cylinder 25

Cylinder pressure [bar]

pressure can be determined from
pcyl (θ0 )Vcyl (θ0 )γ 20
pcyl (θ) =
Vcyl (θ)γ
15
Under these assumptions, the maximum cylinder pressure will
occur at volume minimum. The TDC angle is therefore set to 10
the angle that corresponds to the maximum cylinder pressure.
5

Method II – Symmetry
0
−150 −b −a 0 a b 150
The second method compares the compression phase of the cylin- Crank angle [deg]
der pressure with the expansion phase. If there is no heat trans-
fer and the volume curve is symmetric with respect to TDC, the
cylinder pressure on either side of TDC has the same value; that Figure 1: The region investigated in method II (thick lines).
◦ ◦
is: Limiting angles are set to 30◦ and 115◦ , and θ0 = 115 2+30 =
pcyl (θTDC − ν) = pcyl (θTDC + ν) 72.5◦ . The cylinder pressure in the right region is lower than
in the left region, due to heat transfer. To compensate for heat
for an arbitrary value of v > 0, where θTDC − ν > θIVC and
losses, ∆(θ) (equation 1) is added to the right pressure curve
θTDC + ν < θEVO
(dash-doted line).
A crank angle varying offset ∆(θ) is added to the expansion
curve (see appendix A), to compensate for heat transfer:
„ «η 14
Vcyl (θ0 ) Left curve
∆(θ) = ( pcyl (θTDC −θ0 ) − pcyl (θTDC +θ0 )) (1) Right curve
Vcyl (θTDC +θ) HT compensated curve
12

where η has to be determined and θTDC + θ0 is in the middle

of the right region (figures 1 and 2). The method compares 10
Cylinder pressure [bar]

the pressure trace for the two regions instead of for two single
points, which gives it a low sensitivity to noise. The cylinder 8
volume is described by [9]:

πB 2 6
Vcyl (θ) = Vc + (l + a − s(θ)) (2)
4

l2 − a2 sin2 θ
4
s(θ) = a cos θ + (3)

where Vc is the clearance volume, B cylinder bore, a crank ra- 2

dius and l connecting rod length.

The estimated position of TDC, θ̂TDC , is the position that 0
30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
minimizes the following sum of squared errors: Crank angle [deg]
X h “ ”i2
pcyl (θ̂TDC −θi ) − pcyl (θ̂TDC +θi ) + ∆(θ̂TDC +θi )
a<θi <b Figure 2: In the figure, the left pressure curve has been mirrored
The limiting angles a and b should be chosen so that the inves- in the line θ = θTDC . As can be seen, the right pressure curve
tigated regions are enclosed in the compression and expansion with added ∆(θ) follows the left curve.
phase, but exclude the highest cylinder temperatures to reduce
the effects of heat transfer. To avoid that an offset error, be-
tween the beginning of the compression phase and end of ex- around TDC, its value would be the same as the ratio between
pansion phase, is too dominant, only the region where the pres- specific heats (γ). Since some of the heat transfer occurs in the
sure changes rapidly should be included in the investigated re- investigated regions, the exponent can be expected to be η
= γ.
gions. By studying simulated engine cycles, the limiting angles Motored cycles for an SVC engine simulated according to sec-
are chosen to a = 30◦ and b = 115◦ . tion 3, show that if η is chosen to η = 1.1 the predicted phase-
Also exponent η in equation 1 is determined from simula- lag has an error lower than 0.1◦ for all compression ratios be-
tions. If all heat transfer would occur in the excluded region tween 8 and 14 (figure 3).

2
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

−0.5 °
400 −2 phase lag
0° phase lag
+2° phase lag
300
−1

200

Polytropic coefficient
100
TDC position

−1.5

−2 −100

Actual TDC −200

Estimated TDC

−2.5
−300

−400

−3 −0.5 −0.4 −0.3 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Compression ratio Crank angle [deg]

Figure 3: Position of TDC as function of compression ratio for
an SVC engine. The estimation is done using method II. Since
the engine top is tilted to reduce the compression ratio, the po-
sition of TDC changes with compression. See also figure 6.
Method III – Polytropic exponent method
Method III uses the polytropic exponent for determining the
phase lag. The polytropic exponent is calculated by:
ln pcyl (θi ) − ln pcyl (θi+1 )
n(θi ) =
ln Vcyl (θi+1 ) − ln Vcyl (θi )
If the crank angle is correctly calibrated and assuming constant
specific heat capacity and no heat transfer, the polytropic expo-
nent has the same value independent of crank angle. When there
is a positive phase lag, the polytropic exponent versus crank an-
gle curve is in quadrants II and IV. When there is a negative
phase lag, the curve is in quadrants I and III (figure 4). This
means that if the area on the left side of the estimated position
of TDC is negative and the area on the right side is positive, we
should move the position of TDC to the left. The switch be-
tween quadrants gives the correct position of the crank angle.
To compensate for heat losses, a ∆pcyl is added to the cylin-
der pressure [7] before equation 4 is applied, where
n−1
∆pcyl = ∆Q
Vcyl
The losses to heat transfer Q̇ = hAcyl (Tcyl − Twall ) are esti-
mated with Woschni’s heat transfer correlation [10] for motored
cycles.
 0.8
hht = KB −0.2 pcyl 0.8 Tcyl −0.53 2.588 · 10−5 Up
The method also includes compensation for blow-by, but since
this is not included in this investigation, the blow-by part is ex-
cluded from equation 5.
Figure 4: Polytropic exponent versus crank angle for a motored
engine cycle with no heat transfer and constant specific heat
capacity.
The value of the proportional factor K in equation 6 varies
with engine size, design and material. According to [7], it is cru-
cial to have a correct value of K, and it is therefore determined
via a statistical analysis. If correctly calibrated, the predicted
position of TDC should be independent of engine speed. There-
fore, K should be chosen to the value that gives the minimum
(4) standard deviation of θ̂TDC , where θ̂TDC is calculated for several
different engine speeds.
Here, the standard deviation is calculated for six values of
K – 1.3 to 2.3 in steps of 0.2, and with seven different engine
speeds – 1000 to 4000 rpm in steps of 500 rpm. Interpolation
with cubic splines is used to get a higher resolution of K (figure
5).
Method IV – IMEP based calibration
In [8] the angular distance between the cylinder pressure max-
imum and the actual TDC, α, is described with a function in-
cluding IMEPgross and the maximum cylinder pressure:
XK
α= IMEPgross (7)
[ pcyl ]max
(5)
IMEP should be calculated with the correct crank angle phasing,
but since it is unknown the following relation is used:
IMEPgross = kα + IMEPgross,0 (8)
where IMEPgross,0 is the calculated IMEP when the crank angle
(6) is phased so that TDC coincides with the pressure maximum.
The correlation coefficients XK and k used in equation 7 and
8 are determined by simulation. An engine model for motored
cycles using Woschni’s heat transfer correlation [10] is imple-
mented. By simulating the model for different operating points,

3
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

0.035
correct crank angle phasing is chosen to the adjustment that
gives an R that is closest to R = 2.25. It is found by use of
0.03 interpolation.

0.025

3 SIMULATION
0.02
std(TDC)

Simulation is a helpful tool when evaluating methods. The most

0.015
0.01
0.005
0
1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 2.1
K 
Figure 5: Determination of the proportional factor K in method
III. Stars (*) show the estimated standard deviation of the po-
sition of TDC, and the curves between the stars are calculated
with cubic splines. Here K should be chosen to ≈ 1.68.
a calculation of the coefficients can be done. It is stated in [8]
that the coefficients depend solely on compression ratio.
Here, the simulation model described in section 3 is used
to determine the value of the coefficients XK and k. IMEP
is calculated by trapezoidal numerical integration of the cylin-
der pressure. The coefficients are calibrated for each operating
point the method is applied to.
Method V – Inflection point analysis
To begin with, the crank angle is phased so that TDC coincides
with the cylinder pressure maxima. The polytropic exponent is
calculated with this calibration using equation 4. The polytropic
exponent at the inflection points of the cylinder pressure curve
are called m1 and m2 , where m1 is on the left-hand of TDC.
An inflection point is a point that fulfills:
d2 pcyl (θ)
=0
dθ2
Thereafter, the phasing between the crank angle and cylin-
der pressure is adjusted. With the new setting, another pair of
polytropic exponents at the inflection points, called m1  and m2 ,
are derived.
In [3] it is stated that when the crank angle is correctly ad-
justed, the value of the following ratio
m2 − m1
R=
m2 − m1
is in the range 2.2 ≤ R ≤ 2.3. The crank angle phasing should
be adjusted until this equation is fulfilled.
Here, the ratio R is generated for crank angles between 5◦
before and 5◦ after the pressure maximum, in steps of 1◦ . The
important reason is that the true crank angle offset is known in
the simulation model, and this can be used when comparing the
methods.
The simulated models and methods are implemented in Mat-
lab. For the simulation of engine cycles in a SAAB Variable
Compression (SVC), a standard single zone model is used:
2.2 2.3 pV = mRT
dU = −dQ − dW + dmi hi
i
(The subscript cyl is omitted to improve readability.)
These equation can be rewritten to [11]:
V dp + pdV − mRdT = RT dmcrev
pdV + mcv dT = −dQ + (hcrev/cyl − u)dmcrev
The enthalpy hcrev/cyl changes with the direction of the crevice
flow, but in the simulation the crevice flow is neglected. Chem-
ical properties, like cv and R are taken from the chemical equi-
librium program CHEPP [12]. The specific heat cv depends on
the gas temperature. The differential equation is solved numer-
ically with the Matlab function ode45, which is designed for
non-stiff problems.
The amount of heat transfer is
Q̇ = hht A (T − Twall )
where Woschni’s correlation (equation 6) is used for the calcu-
lation of the heat transfer exponent. The proportional factor K
is set to 2.28, which is the value used by Woschni [10].
For the SVC engine, the cylinder volume as function of
crank angle can not be calculated by the standard volume func-
tion (equation 2). The reason is that the engine top is tilted at
lower compressions. Instead a volume function specially de-
rived for the SVC engine [13] is used, whose shape depends
on both crank angle and compression ratio. The function also
includes piston pin offset.
The angle at which the piston reaches its uppermost posi-
tion (i.e. TDC) changes with compression (figure 6), due to the
design of the SVC engine.
The relative difference between the SVC volume function
and the standard volume function can reach as high as 7% for
low compressions. Still, the SVC volume function is fairly sym-
metric. By adjusting the phasing between the crank angle and
the SVC volume function, so that TDC is at θ = 0, the maxi-
mum relative difference between the SVC volume function and
the perfectly symmetric standard volume function is 0.6% (fig-
ure 7).

4
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

−0.5
cording to section 1 the goal is an accuracy of ±0.1◦ . The op-
erating point of the investigated engine cycle is 1000 rpm and
100 kPa inlet manifold pressure. There is no piston pin offset
−1
and the compression ratio is set to 14, which means that the en-
gine head is not tilted. The cylinder gas consists solely of air.
Inlet valve closing is set to −145◦ . The resolution in the simu-
Crank angle [deg]

−1.5
lation is set to 1 sample every (2.5 · 10−3 )◦ , which is high above
the requirements of the investigated methods.
The estimated position of TDC is shown in table 1, where
the correct position is at θ = 0. As expected, method I estimates
−2

TDC to be placed about 1◦ before the actual TDC. All the other
methods perform quite well, methods II–IV reaches the goal of
0.1◦ accuracy and method V is just above the limit. Method IV
−2.5

gives hardly any error at all, but this can be explained by that
its model parameters have been calibrated for the same engine
−3
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 cycle as the investigation is done on.
Compression ratio

Method θ̂T DC
Figure 6: TDC angle as function of compression ratio for an I -0.80◦
SVC engine. The crank angle θ is defined in such a way that II -0.048◦
θ = 0 coincide with TDC for a non-tilted engine with no piston III -0.014◦
pin offset. IV -0.00041◦
V -0.11◦
0.6

Table 1 Distance between estimated and actual position of

0.4 TDC.

0.2
Relative error [%]

0
5 SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
−0.2
When using measured data, there is always uncertainties and
inaccuracies present. Therefore it is important to investigate the
−0.4 methods ability to handle errors and changes in conditions.
Unless stated otherwise, the investigations below are done
−0.6 on the same engine cycle as in section 4, that is: A motored
engine cycle at 1000 rpm, inlet manifold pressure of 100 kPa,
−0.8
−200 −150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150 200
compression ratio set to 14, no pin offset and cylinder gas con-
Crank angle [deg] sisting of air.
Changes that are less than 0.005◦ are set to ≈ 0

Figure 7: Difference between the SVC and standard volume

function when the crank angle has been adjusted so that the min-
ima of the volume functions coincide.
4 SIMULATION RESULTS
The simulation model described in section 3 is used to produce
motored cycles under different conditions. Initial values on tem-
peratures are taken from measurements on an SVC engine in a
test-bench. The cylinder temperature at IVC is set to the inlet
manifold temperature, and the wall temperature to the tempera-
ture of the coolant.
The five different methods are applied to the same simulated
engine cycle. As explained in section 2, methods II-V have to
perform better than method I to be considered to work, and ac-
Cylinder pressure calibration
The cylinder pressure is usually measured by a piezo-electric
transducer via a charge amplifier. The signal from the charge
amplifier is in Volt, and is translated to Pascal by:
pcyl = gusignal (t) + k(t)
Due to the construction of the charge amplifier, the offset k
changes with time and has to be calibrated continuously. In
some cases the gain g is not known with high precision.
An error in the Volt to Pascal translation will affect the inter-
pretation of the cylinder pressure trace as well as the calculation
of cylinder temperature (figure 8 and 9), since the temperature

5
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

800
Original The outcome of the methods applied to data where the cylin-
Estimated
der pressure has an offset error is shown in table 2. The results
700  
Method θ̂TDC ∆(θ̂TDC )
err=5%
600
I -0.80◦ 0◦
II -0.048◦ 0◦
Temperature [K]

III -0.014◦ ≈ 0◦
500
IV -0.0032◦ ≈ 0◦
V -0.11◦ ≈ 0◦
400
Table 2 Results from data with an offset error in the cylinder
pressure. The offset is 5% of the pressure at IVC.
300

of methods I and II are unchanged compared to section 4. This

200
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150 is due to that these methods are based only on the shape of the
Crank angle [deg]
pressure trace. The other methods are affected by an error in the
offset but the difference is hardly noticeble.
Figure 8: The figure shows the cylinder temperature calculated As for the offset error, methods I and II are unaffected of
during the engine cycle simulation (section 3), and estimated the cylinder pressure gain error (table 3). Also method V is
cylinder temperature from the cylinder pressure trace. The independent on the scaling of the cylinder pressure. Method
whole cylinder pressure trace has been increased with 5 kPa. IV performs worse on this data than on the data without gain
error, which is expected since it was calibrated on the former
900
data – still, the result is very good. Also method III shows some
Original
Estimated sensitivity to gain error.
800
 
Method θ̂TDC ∆(θ̂TDC )
err=5%
700 I -0.80◦ 0◦
II -0.048◦ 0◦
Temperature [K]

600
III 0.032◦ 0.046◦
IV -0.024◦ -0.024◦
500
V -0.11◦ 0◦

Table 3 Results from data with a 5% gain error in the cylinder

400
pressure.

300

200
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150
Crank angle [deg] Cylinder mass and cylinder temperature at IVC
It is often difficult to determine the mass trapped inside the
Figure 9: The estimated temperature curve is calculated from a cylinder during compression and expansion. From the air mass
pressure trace that has been scaled with a factor 1.05. The orig- flow sensor placed before the inlet manifold and the engine
inal temperature corresponds to the unscaled cylinder pressure. speed, we can calculate the mass of air passing by each revo-
lution, but there is no way to directly measure the amount of
residual gas.
is not measured directly but determined from the cylinder pres- If the cylinder temperature is calculated via (9), an error in
sure: estimated cylinder mass will cause an error in calculated cylin-
pcyl (θ)Vcyl (θ) der temperature (figure 10). As can be seen, the shape of the
Tcyl (θ) = (9) temperature curve is very similar to the temperature curve cal-
mcyl R
culated from the incorrectly scaled cylinder pressure (figure 9).
A badly calibrated cylinder pressure can cause an error in
estimated cylinder mass as well, but the size of the error de- The equation of state also gives the following expression for
pends on the method used to calculate the mass. Therefore, the the cylinder temperature:
 
correct cylinder mass is used in the investigation of the effect of Tcyl (θIVC )
Tcyl (θ) = pcyl (θ)Vcyl (θ)
cylinder pressure calibration error. pcyl (θIVC )Vcyl (θIVC )

6
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

800 900
Original Woschni
Estimated Hohenberg

800
700

700
600
Temperature [K]

Temperature [K]
600

500

500

400
400

300
300

200 200
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150 −150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150
Crank angle [deg] Crank angle [deg]

Figure 10: The estimated temperature curve is calculated from Figure 11: Simulated cylinder temperature with Woschni’s heat
the pressure trace and with a cylinder mass that is 5% too big. transfer model and Hohenberg’s heat transfer model.
It also corresponds to a curve calculated with an estimate of
temperature at IVC that is 15 K too low.
the goal of an error less than 0.1◦ .
 
Writing the equation on this form eliminates the cylinder mass Method θ̂TDC ∆(θ̂TDC )
po=2.2mm
from the expression, but instead the temperature at IVC has to I -0.86◦ -0.055◦
be determined. A 5% error in cylinder mass corresponds to an II -0.066◦ -0.018◦
error in temperature at IVC of approximately 15 K. III 0.61◦ 0.62◦
Table 4 contains the results of the methods applied to the IV -0.068◦ -0.068◦
data with a 5% error in the mass estimation. An error in the mass V 0.51◦ 0.62◦
estimation effects the calculation of cylinder temperature, but
the cylinder pressure remains the same. Methods I, II, IV and V Table 5 Results from data where the pin offset is 2.2 mm.
do not use information about temperature or mass. Method III
shows a small, but hardly noticeable sensitivity.
 
Method θ̂TDC ∆(θ̂TDC )
err=5% Heat transfer model
I -0.80◦ 0◦
II -0.048◦ 0◦ The simulated engine cycles used in the investigation are based
III -0.021◦ −0.007◦ on Woschni’s heat transfer, but in the literature there have been
IV -0.00041◦ 0◦ proposed several other models. It is important to investigate if
V -0.11◦ 0◦ the outcome of the methods changes much with the choice of
heat transfer model in the simulation. One often used model is
Table 4 Results from data with a 5% error in the mass estima- Hohenberg’s correlation [14]:
tion.  0.8 −0.4
hht = C1 V −0.06 p · 10−5 T (Up + C2 )
where Up is the mean piston speed. It is used here as a compar-
ison to the Woschni based simulations (figure 11). The model
Piston pin offset parameters have not been calibrated for the SVC engine, instead
they are set to their standard values: C1 = 129 and C2 = 1.4.
Most engines have a piston pin offset; on the SVC engine it The results of the methods applied to data simulated with
is 2.2 mm. The existence of a piston pin offset changes the Hohenberg’s correlation are shown in table 6. Since the heat
position of TDC, and causes the volume curve to be asymmetric. losses are lower than with Woschni’s correlation, the estimation
The angular distance between estimated and actual TDC po- of TDC using method I is better. The estimation errors of meth-
sition is shown in table 5. All methods are sensitive to the ods I and III are almost the same, and therefore it is dubious
change in geometry, but methods III and V are affected the most. to use the more complicated method III, if Hohenberg’s corre-
For this size of the pin offset, methods III and V do not fulfill lation is closer to the true value of h than Woschni’s. It could

7
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

10
be argued that the heat transfer parameters should be calibrated 10
Measured
for the engine in use, but since method III auto-calibrates the Simulated

heat transfer parameter that would make no difference for the

9
outcome of the method. 10

∆(θ̂TDC )

Power spectral density

Method θ̂TDC
I -0.54◦ 0.26◦ 8
10

II -0.0064◦ 0.042◦
III -0.53◦ -0.52◦
IV -0.0043◦ ≈ 0◦ 7
10

V -0.076◦ 0.035◦

Table 6 Results from data based on Hohenberg’s correlation. 6

10

5
10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Frequency x 10
4

Compression
The compression ratio of the SVC engine changes when the en- Figure 12: Spectrum for the measured and simulated cylinder
gine head is tilted. There is a sensor mounted on the engine, pressure.
which measures the compression. This sensor has to be suc-
cessfully calibrated to show a correct value.
An error in the compression ratio information, will cause
viation of the phase-lag based on 200 cycles with added noise
an error in the cylinder volume calculation. Another effect of
are shown in table 8. Method II is the most noise insensitive
decreasing the compression ratio from 14, is that the volume
method. If one of the other methods are to be used, much more
curve will be asymmetric.
data is needed. Table 8 shows an estimation on how many cy-
All the methods shows sensitivity to an error in compression
cles it is needed to be 95% certain that the error caused by noise
ratio (table 7), but methods III and V are the most sensitive.
is less than ±0.05◦ . The estimation is done with a statistical
t-test. Method V uses the second derivative of the pressure sig-
Method θ̂TDC ∆(θ̂TDC )
I -0.80◦ ≈ 0◦
II -0.0074◦ 0.041◦ Method σ̂200 (θ̂TDC ) N̂α=5%
III 0.18◦ 0.19◦ I 0.28 120
IV 0.021◦ 0.021◦ II 0.12 25
V 0.065◦ 0.17◦ III 0.26 110
IV 0.46 330
Table 7 Results from data with an 0.5 error in the compres- V - -
sion. The compression ratio read from the sensor is
14, while the true compression is 13.5. Table 8 Results for data where the cylinder pressure contains
noise. The estimation of the standard deviation and
how many samples are needed, are based on 200 sim-
ulated engine cycles with added noise.

Noise
Noise have been added to the simulated cylinder pressure, to be
able to investigate the methods ability to deal with measurement
noise. The noise has been designed to correspond to the noise
from the compression and expansion phase of a measured en-
gine cycle (figure 12). The measurement was done on an SVC
engine with a flush-mounted piezo-electric pressure transducer
at a sampling rate of 192 kHz. The operating point was the
same as for the simulated cycle used in this investigation, that
is 1000 rpm, compression ratio 14, 100 kPa inlet manifold pres-
sure and no fuel injection.
Since the noise is stochastic, the outcome of the methods
changes much from time to time. The estimated standard de-
nal, which leads to that the noise is magnified. The condition
d2 pcyl (θ)
=0
dθ2
for an inflection point is fulfilled at several crank angles - and
not only at the inflection points, and this makes it impossible to
determine the position of the inflection points by just studying
the second derivative. If method V is to be used, the pressure
data first has to be filtered by a well designed low-pass filter
without any phase-shift.

8
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

Parameter I II III IV V [7] Ales Hribernik. Statistical determination of correlation be-

pcyl : +5% 0◦ 0◦ ≈ 0◦ ≈ 0◦ ≈ 0◦ tween pressure and crankshaft angle during indication of
pcyl : *1.05 0◦ 0◦ 0.05◦ −0.02◦ 0◦ combustion engines. SAE Technical Paper 982541, 1998.
mcyl : *1.05 0◦ 0◦ −0.007◦ 0◦ 0◦
pin off.: 2.2mm −0.06◦ −0.02◦ 0.6◦ −0.07◦ 0.6◦ [8] Ph. Pinchon. Calage thermodynamique du point mort haut
Heat transfer 0.3◦ 0.04◦ −0.5◦ ≈ 0◦ 0.04◦ des moteurs a piston. Revue de l’institut francais du pet-
rc : -0.5 ≈ 0◦ 0.04◦ 0.2◦ 0.02◦ 0.2◦ role, Vol. 39(1):93–111, January 1984.

Table 9 A summary of the sensitivity analysis in section 5. The [9] J. B. Heywood. Internal Combustion Engine Funda-
table contains the change in estimated position of TDC mentals. McGraw-Hill series in mechanical engineering.
when an error is introduced. McGraw-Hill, 1988.

[10] G. Woschni. A universally applicable equation for the in-

6 CONCLUSIONS stantaneous heat transfer coefficient in the internal com-
bustion engine. SAE Technical Paper 670931, 1967.
By comparing the results from section 4 and 5, the conclusion is
that method II-V work (method I is included only for compari- [11] Ylva Nilsson and Lars Eriksson. A new formulation of
son), but only method II and IV fulfills the goal of 0.1◦ accuracy multi-zone combustion engine models. Karlsruhe, Ger-
in all the investigated cases. Table 9 summarizes the results of many, IFAC Workshop: Advances in Automotive Control,
the sensitivity analysis in section 5. All methods are considered 2001.
insensitive to pressure offset and mass error, while methods III
and IV have a slight sensitivity to gain error. The methods have [12] Lars Eriksson. CHEPP - a chemical equilibrium program
more difficulties with errors in geometry and heat transfer, es- package for matlab. SAE Technical Paper 2004-04-0066,
pecially methods III and V. 2004.
The outcome of the investigation is that methods II and IV
give the best estimates of TDC, and are most robust to changing [13] Ylva Nilsson. Cylinder volume function for
conditions. One advantage of method II is that it is the least SVC engines. Technical report, Department of
sensitive method to noise. With much less data than the other Electrical Engineering, 2001. LiTH-R-2408 –
methods, method II is able to estimate the position of TDC with http://www.fs.isy.liu.se/Publications/.
high accuracy.
[14] R. Stone. Introduction to Internal Combustion Engines.
SAE International, third edition, 1999.
REFERENCES
[1] V. Rocco. DI diesel engine in-cylinder pressure data analy- A METHOD II: HEAT TRANSFER COMPENSATION
sis under TDC setting error. SAE Technical Paper 930595,
1993. In the following, we study the crank angles in the interval a <
θ < b, see figure 13. To simplify the writings, the position of
[2] W.L. Brown. Methods for evaluating requirements and
TDC is set to θTDC = 0.
errors in cylinder pressure measurements. SAE Technical
If there is no heat transfer, the cylinder pressure follows the
Paper 670008, 1967.
dash-dotted curve in figure 13. This curve is called pcyl . If there
[3] Marek J. Staś. Thermodynamic determination of TDC in is heat transfer and all heat losses are in the region −a < θ < a,
piston combustion engines. SAE Technical Paper 960610, the cylinder pressure follows the solid line to the right. This
1996. curve is called pcyl . The difference between pcyl (θ) and pcyl (θ)
is ∆(θ).
[4] M. Tazerout, O. Le Corre, and S. Rousseau. TDC determi-
Since there is no heat transfer in the region, the cylinder
nation in IC engines based on the thermodynamic analysis
pressures pcyl and pcyl are:
of the temperature-entropy diagram. SAE Technical Paper
1999-01-1489, 1998.
n
V (ω)
pcyl (θ) = (pcyl (ω) + ∆(ω)) (10)
[5] Mitsue Morishita and Tadashi Kushiyama. An improved V (θ)
method for determining the TDC position in a pv-diagram
n
V (ω)
(first report). SAE Technical Paper 970062, 1997. pcyl (θ) = pcyl (ω) (11)
V (θ)
[6] H. Drangel and R. Reinmann. The variable compression
(SVC) and the combustion control (scc) - two ways to where a < ω < b. The cylinder volume is assumed to be sym-
improve fuel economy and still comply with world-wide metric with respect to TDC, and so is the cylinder pressure. This
emission requirements. SAE Technical Paper 2002-02- implies that
0996, 2002. ∆(θ) = pcyl (−ω) − pcyl (ω) (12)

9
 Downloaded from SAE International by University of Liverpool, Sunday, September 09, 2018

No HT
∆ − no HT
HT
∆ − HT

∆(θ)

Pressure difference
Pressure

−b −a a b Crank angle
Crank angle

Figure 14: Pressure difference between left and right region in

Figure 13: Cylinder pressure trace (solid curves), assuming that
figure 1, where the left region has been mirrored in the line θ =
all heat losses occur in the crank angle region −a < θ < a.
θTDC . The solid line shows the difference between the simulated
The curve that begins at θ = a is called pcyl , and the other
cylinder pressure curves, and the dash-dotted the ∆(θ) function.
one pcyl There is no solid line in the crank angle region −a <
The pale solid line shows the difference between two pressure
θ < a, since the cylinder pressure is not defined in this region.
curves, where all heat transfer occurs in the region −a < θ < a
The pressure difference between the two curves, ∆(θ), are also
in figure 13. The dark solid line shows the pressure difference
shown in the figure.
when there is heat transfer during the whole engine cycle.

Combining equations 10, 11 and 12 gives the following ex-

pression for ∆(θ): B NOMENCLATURE

n θ Crank angle rad
  V (ω)
∆(θ) = pcyl (−ω) − pcyl (ω) (13) p Pressure Pa
V (θ) T Temperature K
m Mass kg
In figure 14 it can be seen that ∆(θ) describes the pressure dif- V Volume m3
ference between the left and right region in figure 1 perfectly. Vc Clearance volume m3
A Area m2
In a measured cylinder pressure trace, the heat transfer can B Cylinder bore m
be expected to occur not only in the region −a < θ < a, but Up Mean piston speed m/s
during the whole engine cycle. Figure 14 shows the pressure R Gas constant J/(kg·K)
difference between the regions −b < θ − a and a < θ < b, cp , cv Specific heat capacity J/(kg·K)
where there are heat losses also in these regions. The slope γ Ratio of specific heat cap.
is lower than if there had been no heat transfer in the regions, s Entropy J/(kg·K)
and close to TDC the curve is concave instead of convex. The hht Heat transfer coefficient J/kg
exponent n of the ∆ function has therefore to be adjusted, and h Enthalpy J
the left and right regions should be defined in such a way that U Internal energy J
they do not include angles close to TDC. W Work J
If the cylinder pressure trace of an engine cycle with con- Q Heat loss J
tinuous heat transfer is called pcyl and θTDC = 0, the pressure n Polytropic exponent
difference between left and right region can be approximated σ Standard deviation
with N Number of cycles

 a+b η TDC Top Dead Center
a+b a+b V( 2 ) SVC SAAB Variable Compression
∆(θ) = pcyl (− ) − pcyl ( ) (14)
2 2 V (θ) CA Crank angle
IVC Inlet Valve Closing
for crank angles a < θ < b, where η changes with engine design EVO Exhaust Valve Opening
and chemical properties of the cylinder gas. cyl Cylinder

10