2012 Workshop on Engine and Powertrain Control,

Simulation and Modeling

The International Federation of Automatic Control
Rueil-Malmaison, France, October 23-25, 2012

Multi Reference Model Predictive

EGR-Valve Control for Diesel Engines
Harald Waschl ∗ Daniel Alberer ∗ Luigi del Re ∗
∗
Institute for Design and Control of Mechatronical Systems at the
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. (e-mail:
harald.waschl,daniel.alberer,luigi.delre@jku.at)

Abstract: Accurate control of the engine air system is essential to comply with emission
legislation. Typically the real emission targets, like N Ox , cannot be measured directly at
a production car and thus different intermediate candidates, like gas mass flows or oxygen
concentrations, are used. In general the candidate choice is a key factor for emissions, because
each of them can only be determined with certain accuracy and consequently a feedback control
based on a specific quantity is only capable of reaching a point within the accuracy range.
Moreover, a slight deviation of one candidate may, due to the nonlinear relations between
emissions and candidates, lead to high N Ox deviations. In a previous work four candidates for
EGR valve control were analyzed and a scheduling scheme according to their N Ox tracking
performance under uncertainties was proposed. Within this work the approach is extended by
the application of a multi reference online MPC control strategy which takes also dynamical
properties into account. To this end a scheduling between the candidates based on the static
and dynamic analysis in the previous work is applied, where the idea is to adapt the inherited
objective function during runtime. The proposed dynamic reference scheduling strategy was
implemented on a simulation model of a passenger car Diesel engine and satisfying results were
obtained.

Keywords: Engine Control, Control Design, Compression Ignition

1. INTRODUCTION a direct feedback control of emissions seems a natural

Over the last decades passenger car Diesel engines have
become complex systems with high numbers of actuators,
like turbo chargers, exhaust gas recirculation or common
rail injection systems, and thus a high degree of freedom in
control design is present, Guzzella and Onder (2010). The
main control targets, besides ensuring stable operation
within safety limits, are to provide the desired engine
torque, to optimize fuel economy and of course comply
with the emission legislation. Often the control task is
split into several sub components, like fuel system or air
system, and in production engines often performed by a
combination of feedforward and SISO feedback loops.
For Diesel engine emission legislation two of the main legis-
lated quantities are the obtained oxides of nitrogen (N Ox )
and particulate matter emissions (PM), for a more detailed
discussion on Diesel emission control see e.g. Johnson
(2008). The main source of N Ox during the combustion
process is the formation of thermal N Ox from oxidation of
atmospheric nitrogen during the high temperature phase
in the combustion process. One method to reduce the
N Ox emissions is the use of exhaust gas recirculation
(EGR) to dilute the mixture inside the combustion cylin-
der and thus to lower the temperature and oxygen con-
centration. As a consequence, the control of the engine air
system is crucial to ensure stable N Ox tracking, especially
in view of incrementally stringent emission legislation. An
important choice is the selection of reference candidates,
although that in theory and also in laboratory setups
choice, on a real engine a fast and accurate measurement
is seldom available. For example, the currently available
production type N Ox sensors, like Continental (2008), do
not offer the necessary dynamic capabilities for closed loop
control. To this end, intermediate quantities, which are
related to the physical states of the air system, like air
mass flows or oxygen concentrations, are used. Examples
for the air system control strategies can be found in Sun
et al. (2005), Alfieri et al. (2006) or Ammann et al. (2003),
Stefanopoulou et al. (2000). The couplings and complexity
of the system also prompted an interest to apply model
based predictive control strategies like presented in Ortner
and del Re (2007), Alberer (2009) or Karlsson et al. (2010).
However, each of those strategies need reference quantities,
where all of them can only be determined by measure-
ment or estimation with limited accuracy and dynamics.
To address this issue, in preceding works Waschl et al.
(2012a) and Waschl et al. (2012b), a strategy to select
between different feedback candidates for the control of
the EGR path with respect to the N Ox tracking stability
was proposed. Therefore the sensitivity of each candidate
to the uprising N Ox emissions was determined and related
to the achievable accuracy of the candidate when obtained
with production standard sensors. The main outcome was
a scheduling scheme based on stationary sensitivities which
was combined with a feedback control strategy and it was
possible to achieve satisfying results on a real engine. A
first extension by a dynamic control approach was pro-
posed in this work, which was based on a feedback control

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2012 IFAC E-CoSM (E-CoSM'12)
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with one candidate, where the reference was adapted in
steady state to match the candidate with the minimal
N Ox deviation.
In the following this idea is continued and the approach
is extended by the application of a predictive control
approach. The idea is to identify a model of the air system
and then to use all reference candidates simultaneously,
where scheduling or weighting of the candidates, accord-
ing to the previous results, is performed directly in the
MPC objective function. To this end, the MPC problem
is formulated as QP and implemented with qpOASES,
Ferreau et al. (2008), with the possibility to adapt the
objective function during runtime. qpOASES is an open
source online QP solver which uses an active set strategy
and is especially suited for real time MPC applications.
For example, the same solver was already used in Ferreau
et al. (2007) to control the whole air system of a Diesel
engine by online MPC.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 the
considered system and the previous work leading to the
selection strategy are presented. Section 3 describes the
MPC approach and the dynamical scheduling strategy
and in Section 4 evaluation results based on a MVEM
simulation are presented and discussed. Finally in Section
5 the conclusions and future work directions are given.
2. PROBLEM AND SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A model of a 2l 4 cylinder Diesel engine, equipped with
common rail direct injection system, cooled high pressure
EGR and a variable geometry turbine turbo charger is con-
sidered, where a schematic representation is given in Fig. 1.
It should be noted that the focus is on the EGR path of
Fig. 1. Diesel engine air system
the air system which is used to maintain the fraction of
the recirculated exhaust gas in the combustion cylinder.
Therefore the used control actuator is the EGR-valve
(xEGR ). Certainly, due to the strong system couplings also
other quantities, like pressure ratios between intake and
exhaust manifold or temperatures, have an influence on
the obtained EGR rate. Nevertheless, for this work it was
assumed that only control authority over the EGR-valve is
475
available, as it is typically the case in production standard
SISO control structures. The proposed methodology, to
find the best reference in each operating range, can be
used within a MIMO control approach. However, in this
work, all other quantities, like turbo charger guide vane or
throttle positions, cannot be altered and are determined
by separate controllers.
As already stated above, different intermediate quantities
can be used to control the amount of EGR and thus the
obtained emission levels. Within this work four different
candidates are considered. These are the fresh air mass
flow (M AF ), the EGR rate (rEGR ) determined by the
mass fraction of recirculated exhaust gas, the exhaust
manifold oxygen concentration (O2,ex ) and the intake
manifold oxygen concentration (O2,in ). Two of these four
candidates can be measured directly with production
standard sensors, while the other two candidates (O2,in
and rEGR ) are determined based on model assumptions
and several measurements, like boost pressure or intake
temperature. A detailed description of the necessary steps
for the estimation can be found in Waschl et al. (2012b).
However, for clarification also here the basic equations are
presented. First the cylinder intake mass flow ṁcyl,in is
determined by simple mass balance equations and the ideal
gas law
M AP · v̇cyl,in
ṁcyl,in = (1)
Tintk · R
Veng · n · ηV ol
with: v̇cyl,in = (2)
2
where Veng is the engine displacement, ηV ol the volumetric
efficiency, v̇cyl,in the volumetric flow rate from the intake
manifold to the cylinders, R is the ideal gas constant and
Tintk is the temperature in the intake manifold.
Finally the EGR rate can be calculated by
ṁegr
rEGR = (3)
M AF + ṁegr
with: ṁegr = ṁcyl,in − M AF (4)
and the intake oxygen concentration is given by
ṁegr · O2,ex + M AF · O2,air
O2,in = (5)
ṁegr + M AF
where O2,air is the mass based oxygen concentration of the
fresh air.
2.1 Reference candidate sensitivity determination
Each candidate can only be determined with a certain
accuracy. In the case of directly measured quantities the
achievable accuracy is solely depending on the sensor spec-
ification, which is provided by the manufacturer. In the
case of estimated quantities, however, the accuracy can
be determined by the accuracies of the used components
and the application of Gaussian error propagation. As a
consequence of sensor deviation, a feedback control based
on one candidate, even in the case of perfect tracking, can
only reach a value within the specified accuracy range.
Moreover, this deviation leads to a deviation in the ob-
tained N Ox levels, which are related to the intermediate
quantities by highly nonlinear functions. In the previous
work in different steady state points a sensitivity analysis
was performed resulting in a selection criterion, which pro-
vided a choice of optimal reference candidate for feedback
2012 IFAC E-CoSM (E-CoSM'12)
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control with respect to N Ox tracking performance, see 3. CONTROL DESIGN

Waschl et al. (2012a). This static scheduling criterion is
given by The proposed multi reference control structure for the
EGR-valve control is depicted in Fig. 3. Besides the plant

∆yN Ox  1
Sµ,N Ox |OP = · ∆yµ · (6) itself, it consists of three major components which will
∆yµ OP  yN Ox
be described in the following; the online MPC which de-
µ = [M AF, O2,ex , O2,in , rEGR ] termines the control action for the EGR-valve in depen-
with the local sensitivity of the N Ox emissions yN Ox dency of the variable objective function, a state observer
to the feedback reference candidate yµ determined by necessary for the MPC implementation and the reference
∆yN Ox /∆yµ and the achievable accuracy of each can- scheduling which provides the weightings for the objective
didate ∆yµ . An application example of the scheduling function.
criterion with real measurements and a reference selection
Espd yMAF
strategy which always selects the candidate with the lowest uMD wf
arising N Ox deviation is presented in Fig. 2 1 . The data xVGT Diesel yO
2,ex
Engine
was created with a mean value simulation model and sen- Air system
yO
2,in

sor accuracies specified by the manufactures, see section 4. xEGR yr

EGR

It provides a static selection criterion for the candidates

over the operating range. y
^
y
State
Observer ^
x
Online
rEGR
MPC xEGR
yref
O2,in

Espd Q
O2,ex Reference R
wf Scheduling S
MAF

Fig. 3. Control structure for online MPC based multi

2900
2750
reference control
2500
2250
2000
1750
1500 30
1250 22.5 25
17.5 20
1000 10 15
900
0.1 0.5
2.5 5 7.5 3.1 System model
Espd in rpm wf in mg/cyc

As known, in MPC a model of the system is needed to

Fig. 2. Reference candidate selection based on static anal-
ysis, Waschl et al. (2012b)
As it can be seen in Fig. 2, over a wide operating range
a control strategy based on O2,ex will lead to the lowest
N Ox deviations. However, this was only a steady state
analysis and in a next step also dynamical aspects of each
reference were considered. In this case different results
were obtained, namely that M AF and rEGR showed faster
dynamics than O2,ex . Moreover, each of the candidates
showed different dynamic behavior and so it would be
necessary to tune the proposed feedback control structure
separately for each candidate. To circumvent this issue a
feedback control structure based on M AF and an adapta-
tion of this reference, according to the scheduling scheme,
was implemented, leading to an improved N Ox tracking
performance compared to a single reference control struc-
ture. Although the dynamic extension led to satisfying
results during evaluation, it prompted the question, if the
N Ox tracking performance can be further enhanced by ap-
plication of an approach which accounts for the dynamics
inherently in the control law. To this end, a strategy which
uses a model predictive controller based on an identified
system model and an adapted scheduling scheme for the
reference candidates is proposed.
1 It should be pointed out again that not only the accuracy of the
estimated candidate itself, but also the sensitivity to N Ox is used to
determine the candidate in this figure.
predict the future system behavior. To this end, a local
linear discrete state space model
xk+1 = Axk + Buk (7)
yk = Cxk + Duk (8)
T
with the inputs
 uk = [xEGR , xV GT , Espd, wf ] and out-
puts yk = yM AF , yO2,ex , yO2,in , yrEGR was identified.
Note that for the identified model not only the controlled
variable xEGR but also additional inputs, like the engine
speed, were considered during identification and later used
as measured disturbances in the control strategy. Due to
the fact that the focus lay on the air system control, the
impact of the turbocharger guide vane position on the
system was considered during identification. The other two
inputs were chosen, because on the one hand engine speed
Espd and fuel amount wf have a strong impact on the air
system and, on the other hand, can be used to categorize
the operating range of the engine. The model was identified
with prediction error minimization based on measurements
where all inputs were excited with pseudo random binary
signals (PRBS), see Section 4.1.
To account for model plant mismatches, e.g. caused due
to the nonlinear characteristics, the system was extended
with an output error structure for each measured output.
Furthermore, based on the identified model a state ob-
server, here a Kalman filter (see e.g. Brown and Hwang
(1997)), was designed. The observer was used to estimate

476
2012 IFAC E-CoSM (E-CoSM'12)
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current system state information for the MPC and addi-
tionally to provide filtering for the current system outputs
which were then used for MPC.
3.2 Online MPC
For the multi reference EGR-valve control with the identi-
fied model an online capable MPC implementation was
used. In the considered linear discrete time case it is
possible to condense the MPC problem as a QP, see
e.g. Maciejowski (2002), which is solved online with the
realtime capable solver qpOASES .
In MPC the applied control signal is calculated based on
the optimization of an objective function which utilizes
the system model to predict the future outputs and so
determines the optimal control inputs. In our SIMO case
the optimization problem can be stated as
nP H
1X T qµ,k = qµ,min ∀µ 6= rEGR
min (yk − yref,k ) Qk (yk − yref,k ) + ∆uk Rk ∆uk
u 2
k=0
+ uk Sk uk (9)
s.t.
uk = uk−1 + ∆uk
xk+1 = Ap xk + Bp uk yk = Cp xk
u ≤ uk ≤ u k = 0 . . . nCH − 1
∆uk = 0 k = nCH . . . nP H .
The optimization is performed according to the objective
function and over the prediction horizon with the length
nP H samples, where control inputs are determined only
for the control horizon with nCH samples. The influence
of the different entries on the objective function and so the
optimization result is defined by the weighting matrices Q,
R and S. The deviations from each of the four reference
candidates yµ − yµ,ref are weighted by the matrix Q which
is defined by

qM AF ,k 0 0 0
 of the discrete time MPC and the weighting algorithm
 0 qO2,ex ,k 0 0 
Qk =  . (10)
0 0 qO2,in ,k 0 
0 0 0 qrEGR ,k
Moreover, due to the structure of Q it is possible to
reformulate the condensing problem in dependency of one
of the four weightings and aggregate the Hessian and
the gradient of the uprising QP online by straightforward
matrix operations. The necessary operations for this online
tuning approach of a similar MPC application in QP
formulation and with the identical solver are described
more elaborately in Waschl et al. (2011). In addition, in
the objective the overall control effort can be weighted by
S and the control advance is penalized by R, which are
both scalar values in the considered application.
3.3 Reference scheduling strategy
Although in steady conditions all four reference candidates
can be transformed into each other, in the dynamic op-
eration different responses arise, even in the perfect case
without sensor errors. More detailed information on the
different dynamics, like step responses or rise times, is
presented in Waschl et al. (2012a). These differences are
caused by physical properties, like system dynamics or
mixture and transport effects, and can also depend on
477
the used sensor principles. As stated above and in the
previous works, the optimal feedback reference candidate
in steady state does not necessarily lead to a suitable
tracking performance during dynamic scenarios. In the
multi reference scheduling approach this behavior should
be taken into account, first by the model based controller
and second by a smart weighting scheduling. To this end
the following scheme is proposed; during transient changes
the reference candidate with the fastest dynamic response,
according to the previous results rEGR , is selected and
afterwards the weighting of the optimal reference in steady
operation, determined by the static analysis, is increased
stepwise, while the weightings of the other candidates are
decreased.
The strategy to determine the weighting qµ,k for each
candidate µ can be formulated as:
if setpoint change detected then
qrEGR ,k = qrEGR ,max
else
if mod(k, nupdate ) = 0 then

−1 ∀Sµ,N Ox 6= min (Sµ,N Ox )
ζµ ∈
1 ∀Sµ,N Ox = min (Sµ,N Ox )
qµ,k = qµ,k + ζµ · α · qµ,k−1
else
qµ,k = qµ,k
end if
end if
qµ,k = min (qµ,k , qµ,max )
qµ,k = max (qµ,k , qµ,min )
with the minimal qµ,min and maximal qµ,max allowed en-
tries for each qµ . Additionally two parameters α ∈ [0, 1]
and nupdate are introduced. α defines the increase and
decrease rate of the weightings to the maximal or min-
imal allowed entries of qµ . With nupdate the time scales
can be separated. This is necessary because the in- and
decrease after a setpoint change should be adjusted to
the specific rise and settle times of the used candidates
and these are typically slower than the used system sam-
pling time. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that
in the current approach a setpoint change is detected if
the gradient of engine speed or fuel amount exceeds a
specific threshold. An example for the weighting schedul-
ing performed by the algorithm is depicted in Fig. 4,
where at the time instants t = 0 s and t = 5 s a set-
point change was performed. The setpoint of the engine
was changed from (Espd = 1750 rpm, wf = 5 mg/cyc) to
(Espd = 2000 rpm, wf = 5 mg/cyc). In this figure also the
optimal static reference to which the weighting should
converge, as given in Fig. 2 is presented.
4. RESULTS
For evaluation of the proposed strategy a simulation en-
vironment based on a mean value model in combination
with an emission model was used. Mean value models are
frequently used for control design orientated engine model-
ing and the particular model was calibrated with measure-
ments of the real engine and provides reasonable results in
comparison with real measurements over a driving cycle,
see Alberer (2009). To determine the N Ox emissions a
2012 IFAC E-CoSM (E-CoSM'12)
Rueil-Malmaison, France, October 23-25, 2012

During the N Ox sensitivity analysis, similar to our previ-

1000 ous work, the sensor accuracies listed in Table 1 were used.
Note that all of these quantities were used either directly or
qMAF

500
via calculation to determine the four reference candidates.
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 The given values are based on sensor properties provided
1000 by the manufacturers and all are given as multiplicative
qO2,ex

500 errors in percent 3 .

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 Table 1. Sensor accuracies used for optimal
1000 static reference determination
qO2,in

500
Sensor error
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 ∆M AF/M AF 5% ∆O2,ex /O2,ex 2.5%
1000 ∆M AP/M AP 2% ∆v̇cyl,in /v̇cyl,in 3%
qrEGR

500 ∆Tintk /Tintk 1%

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 To evaluate the control performance four different sets of
rEGR Optimal static reference relative sensor errors were applied. These errors are listed
O2,in
O2,ex in Table 2 and given as relative errors. For closed loop
MAF
control these sensor errors were added to the four candi-
0 2 4 6 8 10
t in s dates and the erroneous measurements were used for the
controller. This resembles the situation on a production
engine, where also only sensor measurements are available
Fig. 4. Example for the multi reference scheduling principle which are subject to their specified accuracy and the real
physical values cannot be accessed.
nonlinear emission model which was also identified at the
same engine was used and more details can be found in Table 2. Applied relative sensor errors
Hirsch et al. (2010). Sensor error Set1 Set2 Set3 Set4
∆M AF -3% -2% 1% 3%
4.1 Simulation setup ∆O2,ex -1.5% 2% -1% -2%
∆v̇cyl,in -3% 1% 1% 2%
∆Tintk -1% -0.5% -1% -3%
Based on the nonlinear mean value model a discrete time ∆M AP -2.5% 5% 1% 2%
local linear state space model was identified and used for
the MPC and Kalman filter design. As operating point an Each of the necessary reference candidate maps was gener-
engine speed of 2100 rpm and a fuel amount of 10 mg/cyc ated with steady state measurements without sensor errors
were chosen and the system was excited with a PRBS and also the steady state reference for the N Ox emissions
around this point. In detail the inputs were varied as was obtained during these experiments. This step was
follows easy to perform at the mean value model, because all real
Espd = 2100 ± 300 rpm, wf = 10 ± 7.5 mg/cyc, physical values were available 4 .
xEGR = 20 ± 15 %, xV GT = 90 ± 9 %
4.2 Simulation results
and consequently the model is only valid in this operating
range. To cover the whole engine operating range a set of To determine the performance of the multi reference
models should be identified. For example a partitioning scheduling strategy different evaluation scenarios were
of the whole range into 12 sections specified by engine performed. As performance criterion the tracking error
speed and fuel amount, like presented in Ortner and del between steady state N Ox emissions reference determined
Re (2007), can be used. The system sampling time for the without sensor errors and the emissions obtained during
MPC and the identified model was set to Ts = 10 ms 2 and the closed loop control with sensor errors was used. More
a prediction horizon nP H of 600 samples was chosen. For in detail, the sum of squared N Ox tracking errors given
the control horizon a blocking strategy was applied with by
nCH = [5, 5, 10, 10, 1] samples leading to a total control Tscenario /Ts
horizon length of 31 samples, where the last optimized X 2
control signal sample is kept constant over the prediction eN Ox ,µ = (yN Ox ,k,ref − yN Ox ,k,µ ) (11)
k=0
horizon, as usual in MPC strategies. Both horizons were
selected based on system dynamics and adapted during was chosen, where Tscenario is the runtime of the evalua-
the simulation studies to improve the control performance. tion scenario. To compare the performance of the dynam-
The reference scheduling strategy was operated with a ical multi reference scheduling it was compared against
lower sampling time, whereas nupdate was set to 10 leading different MPC setups which used the same system model,
to a steptime of 100 ms for each increase or decrease of control and prediction horizon but different objective func-
qµ and the parameter α was set to 0.5. All simulations tion weightings. These weightings were used to design four
were performed with the nonlinear mean value model in different MPC controllers, whereas each of them favors
combination with the linear MPC environment. 3 Notice that different sensor errors might lead to different results.
4 If the strategy will be implemented on a real engine at a testbench
2 This sampling time was chosen because it is feasible for a later im- for these reference measurements highly accurate testbench sensor
plementation on a rapid prototyping system at the engine testbench. devices have to be used.

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However, it has to be noted that this kind of scheduling

rEGR in % MAF in mg/cyc

300
based on the sensor accuracies is similar to a worst case
250 analysis. Consequently, it may happen that the real sensor
200
Reference errors used to calculate a reference quantity cancel each
0 5 10 15 20MAF MPC25 30
60 Optimal scheduling MPC other out and thus lead to lower N Ox deviations than
40
the MPC based on the scheduling strategy. Nevertheless,
the real values are unknown at a production engine and
20
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 thus the reference scheduling provides a sensible choice to
40
improve the N Ox tracking performance under worst case
xEGR

30
assumptions.
20
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 In another test the specified sensor error boundaries from
NOx in g/h

4
3
2
0 5 10 15 20
t in s
Fig. 6. Detailed part of Fig. 5, during the first setpoint
change between t = 5 s and 30 s
one reference candidate. For example, in the first case
a MPC which focuses on M AF tracking was designed,
to this end the value for the M AF weighting qM AF was
set to the maximum value of qµ and all other tracking
errors were weighted with qµ,min . In Fig. 5 a comparison
of the tracking behavior for the solely on M AF based MPC
approach and the optimal scheduling is presented. The test
scenario in this example was a series of fuel amount steps
at constant engine speed and sensor errors from Set1 were
applied during the simulation.
As it can be seen in Fig. 5, the multi reference scheduling
leads to lower deviations of N Ox compared to a controller
focusing only on M AF . In this scenario in steady state
first rEGR , afterwards M AF and finally O2,ex led to the
smallest deviations, as determined by the selection strat-
egy. To provide further insight into the dynamic behavior
a detailed region of the same test, during the change from
rEGR to M AF is presented in Fig. 6. Moreover, in this
figure also xEGR is presented.
An additional scenario was used to verify the dynamic
control performance of the scheduling strategy, where
at a constant engine speed of Espd = 2150 rpm a se-
quence of fuel amount steps, occurring each 25 s, was
performed. The sequence was given by eight values wf =
[7, 9, 2.5, 6, 10, 8, 15, 4] mg/cyc. In order to evaluate the
performance under different sensor error combinations,
four different sensor error sets listed in Table 2 were
examined and the results are presented in Table 3. As
performance criterion (11) was used, whereas all values
are given in percent and normalized to the worst value for
each set.
Table 3. N Ox tracking performance for test
scenario
Set1 Set2
eN Ox ,M AF 100.0% 8.3%
eN Ox ,O2,ex 91.4% 9.4%
eN Ox ,O2,in 50.4% 13.7%
eN Ox ,rEGR 73.3% 100.0%
eN Ox ,opt.scheduling 32.2% 5.8%
These results demonstrate that for each sensor combina-
tion it was possible to achieve the minimal N Ox tracking
error with the multi reference scheduling MPC strategy.
Table 1 in all possible 32 combinations, i.e. positive or
negative relative error for each sensor, were used. The
25 30 scenario was identical to the test with the four different
sets and as evaluation criterion the summed N Ox tracking
error for all combinations was chosen. The results are
summarized in Table 4 and again with the multi reference
scheduling the best result could be achieved.
Table 4. Overall N Ox tracking performance for
32 sensor error combinations
Control M AF O2,ex O2,in rEGR opt.scheduling
32
P
eN Ox ,i 27.9% 27.1% 30% 100% 13.5%
i=1
5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
A multi reference scheduling algorithm in combination
with MPC framework for the control of the EGR-Valve
of a Diesel engine was presented. The aim was to achieve
minimal N Ox tracking errors in the case of erroneous
sensor readings used for feedback control. This work was
an extension of previous analysis where it was shown that
the choice of reference is crucial for emission control with
intermediate quantities. The strategy was applied on a
nonlinear simulation model and led to satisfactory results.
It was possible to achieve a better N Ox tracking perfor-
mance than a control based on one reference candidate
under the assumption of different sensor errors. Although
the implementation was performed on a simulation model,
a later implementation on a real engine at a testbench
was kept in mind, thus the real time capable MPC and
scheduling strategy can be transferred to real engine with-
out substantial changes.
In future work we will focus on the evaluation of the
strategy on a real engine, under different test scenarios
and the combination with a MIMO model predictive
control approach for the whole air system with respect
to N Ox tracking performance. An additional task will
be the reduction of the necessary measurements for the
determination of the N Ox sensitivity and the extension
of the operating range, e.g. by multiple linear models or
nonlinear MPC.
Set3 Set4
32.0% 22.3%
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
61.1% 41.2%
73.7% 68.6% The authors gratefully acknowledge the sponsoring of
100.0% 100.0% this work by the COMET K2 Center ”Austrian Center
19.4% 13.5% of Competence in Mechatronics (ACCM)” and the JKU
Hoerbiger Research Institute for Smart Actuators (JHI).
The COMET Program is funded by the Austrian Federal
Government, the Federal State Upper Austria and the
Scientific Partners of ACCM.

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2012 IFAC E-CoSM (E-CoSM'12)
Rueil-Malmaison, France, October 23-25, 2012

350 1000
MAF in mg/cyc

300

qMAF
500
250

200 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
20 Reference
100
MAF MPC
O2,ex in %

Optimal scheduling MPC

qO2,ex
15
50

10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
22 1000
O2,in in %

20

qO2,in
500
18

16 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
60 1000
rEGR in %

50

qrEGR
500
40

30 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Espd in rpm

wf in mg/cyc

2200 10 4
NOx in g/h

7.5
2100 3
Espd 5
2000 wf 2.5 2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
t in s t in s

Fig. 5. Comparison between M AF based and optimal scheduling MPC for sensor errors specified in Set1

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