Copyright © 1996 IFAC 8b-03 5

13th Triennial World Congress, San Francisco, USA

S.I. ENGINE IDLE CONTROL IMPROVEMENT BY USING

AUTOMOBILE REVERSIBLE "ALTERNATOR"
L.K. Kouadio, P. Bidan, M. Valentin, .J .P. Berry

L.J1.kS./C.iV.R.,s'., 7 Avenue du Colonel ROCllE, 31077 Ton/o1lse CedeT

FRANCE.
Phone: (13) 61..'13.64.17: Fax: (3S) 61.55.35.77: [-11Iall: kOltadlO@la(ls.jr

Abstract. This paper describes an original method for engine idle improve-
ment. It is well known that inappropriate idle-speed control increases fuel
consulnption, pollutant emissions and also reduces the idle quality. To
preV(~llt engine stalling and improve its performance during idling it is
proposed a strategy based on two control loops such as that of the tra-
ditional air-flow ratio and all other providing an external supplementary
torque via the automobile's reversible "alternator". Hence engine stalling
is prevented due to the faster torque response and secondly Fuel/ Air ratio
is easily controllable due to the slow variation of the intake air-flow.

Keywords. Spark-Ignition Engine, Idle-speed control, Electrical assist.ance,

Synchronous machine, Fuel Control, Automotive emissions, Multi-input system

1. INTRODUCTION others) to reduce pollutant emissions and fuel consump-

Spark ignition engine is nowadays the mostly used en-
gine in automotive design because of its better power to
weight ratio despite its rdativdy low efficiency around
:30% combined with the high lower heating value of the
fuel. Nevertheless, all t.he polit,ics of energy savings and
environment protection ill itiated since the last twenty
years call for mallY in(.errogatiolls. Tlms we have to think
about the necessary improvements in the engine opera-
tion. \Vhile "cruising speed·· phases are considered to be
more or less clean, the transient are difficult to control.
In particular the optimal Fuel/Air (F/ A) ratio control
is more difficult to realize in transient due to the in-
take subsyst.ems Ilonlinearit,ies and dynamics (Aquino,
1£181; Bician et al.. 1993; Bidan tI a/., 1D95). As a con-
sequence, fuel consumption and pollutant, emissions in-
creases (Brallll cl al .. 1D88). Concerning the idling it
is kllown that. lower idle-speed is one method (amongst
tion. Furthermore car driveability improvement depends
on the smallness of torque fluctuation during idling. Un-
fortunately, a lower speed causes engine stability deteri-
oration and increases the engine sensitivity to external
torque di::;turbance (Nishimura and Ishii, 198G). To solve
the abow mentioned problems this paper proposes to
include an external torque c.ont.rolloop within the auto-
mobile reversible "alternator". The reasons behind this
approach is to avoid large throttle opening gradient and
thereby t.o reduce the air intake nonlinearities effects on
the control. In this way, an accurate F / A ratio is easily
attainable to allow the three-way catalyst converters to
keep to the bearable ±0.3% excursions from the stoichio-
metric conditions (Amstutz. 1994). The main novelty of
the system resides in t.he fact. that. the electrical machine
based the torque generation is the au (,ol11obile "alterna-
t.o!'''. This ma.chine is a VVound- Rotor Synchronous Ma-
chine (S. M.) and is coutrolled to be able to operate in

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1 crit -
- ( 2 )
)'+1
-:2:1 , rAH -- 120RTm
nft10VBDl"
C' _
,-
MpVrn
RTm '
3,3 Linear idle modeling of the engine

Before establishing the overall idle model of the engine,

Pm the relation governing the rotat.ional dynamics is here
{ P" if > 'I'crit
Pa
=
I'~:lI
1',) modeled with a constant inertia J and given by the well
Pm
if - < rcrit known mechanics law:
Pa
and GT( <I») is the aeraulic resistallce of the t.hrottle, ra (5)
is the engine air intake ratio (normalized value), Pr is a
partial pressure depending Oil acollstic phenomenon, Hence, all the equations established so far lead us to the
linear engine idling model below (see Fig.:)), deriving
In t.his paper given t.hat our purpose consist of control- from Dobner's idling linear small signal model (Francis
lillg t.he idle-speed of a four-cylinder ellgine at the vicin- and Fruechte, I U83).
ity of a nominal speed the linearisation of system (1),
for small perturha.t.iol1s, yields

{ (~.6.P"'= A(K<I>.6.<I> - [(NP.6.Pm - KpND.N) (2)

= [\-,,}, .6. Pm + [(,'N!'::..N
.6.1'"
(.6.) denotes a small fluctuat ion ,Hound a nominal point,

3.2 Engzn(; TOT'que !nodding

Modeling the average of the engine torqutC consist in a re-
lationship between the engine control parameters (such
as t.he spark advance et, the mixture FjA ratio ri, the
air-mass ratio I'l
into the cylinder and the engine speed
N) to yield the t.orque at any speed. For this, assum-
ing an optimal spark advance the following relation has
been experimentally identified:
I'th = (lo[l - kdrdt - 'fD) - rim)2]ra(t -7n)
-al -
where I';", is the Fuelj Air l'atio which yields the maxi-
mum torque, r,h is the engine torque, o.[), ai, (/2, a3 and
kl are constants.
As shown above in 3, the tOI'que model reveals a time de-
lay I'D between the change in the air-flow ratio (through
the inlet valve) and the corresponding change in the
t.orque. This time lag becomes more and more prevailing
at low speed alld increases the engine stalling risks if a
significant torque disturbance occurs, The idling control
system proposed in this paper should be able to prevent
the consequences of this delay by producing the external
torque mentioned early, Assuming that l'i is maintained
constant ihe silllplified small sigllal linear model of the
engine torque is expressed as:
t..rth = ao(l - kd l'i - l'imY
= k~SI'<l(t - I'D) - f.6.N
Fig, 3, Linear small signal model of the engine idling
4. ELECTRICAL ISSUES
As explained previously, the principle of the proposed
Idle-speed Control Syst.em (LC.S.) is based on the ca-
pability of the automobile's Synchronous Machine to
operate in motor phase and thus sust.ain the S.l. en-
a2N(t) - a3N2(t) (3) gine in idling phase. In this way to perform the control
system some experiments and tests have been made on
1.5KW automobile "alternator" , The main test consists
of recording the torque this machine is able t.o produce
when it operates in motor phase (see Fig.6). But in first
time the measurements of the "st.atic torque", which
consists of feeding two phases of the synchronous ma-
chine windings with a Direct. Current (Ie) and record-
ing the torque versus t.he angle between phase 1 of the
st.ator and the rotor, leads to us a pract.ical result in-
volving Cl relation proportionality between torque and
current (see Fig.4), Considering the back e.mJ. to be a
sinusoidal form the current necessa.ry to produce a con-
stant torque have t.o be also sinusoidal forl11 (Marchand
and Razek, 199:\). Thus the theoretical torque is given
by:
I, MS 'P
.1. , .. I·)]
= 3P ['" v Ieffcosop + Ld -2 Lq I"~;ffsm.('2~), (6)
).6.7'a(t - I'D) - f.6.N
(4) where p is the number of pole pair, if>" the flux in the
rotor and ,~, the angle between the current. and the back
emf, respectively, Ld and L'I are d,q axis induct.ances.

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