One of the most successful applications of control technology in fluid systems is in the context of dynamic instability in continuous combustion systems. Recent results in this area have shown unequivocally that active control is not only a feasible technology for reducing the unsteady pressure oscillations, but also that the approach can be scaled up to large-scale industrial rigs. Models of c...

The goal of this project is to provide a compact and efficient fluid power source for mobile applications (10 kW-500 kW), including on-road vehicles and off-road heavy machineries. This is achieved through the development of a hydraulic free-piston engine (HFPE). Previously, a virtual crankshaft mechanism is proposed by the authors which regulates the pistons to follow any reference trajectorie...

The control of disturbances due to fuel quality variation is important development area in the grate combustion technology. Main challenges in the control of the grate combustion are inhomogeneous fuel, variation in fuel moisture content, non-uniform distribution of fuel on the grate area and high percentage of combustibles in ash. Information on events which occur in the furnace plays an impor...

Implementation of real-time combustion feedback for use in closed-loop combustion control is a technology that has potential to assist in the successful production implementation of advanced diesel combustion modes. Low-temperature, pre-mixed diesel combustion is presently of interest because it offers the ability to lower the engine-out emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate mat...

Municipal solid waste combustion (MSWC) plant operators are currently under an increasing pressure to optimize the economic performance of their plants. A route with high potential for optimizing this performance is by improving the performance of the MSWC plant combustion control system, which typically is of the PID-type. In this paper, motivated by the industrial need to improve the overall ...

By modulating engine valves to reinduct hot exhaust gas together with air and fuel, a clean and efficient form of autoignition can be created. Control of this combustion process, known as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), requires not only precise valve control but also a combustion control strategy that accounts for the cycle-to-cycle coupling through the exhaust. This paper outl...

Two virtual sensors are proposed that use the spark-plug based ion current sensor for combustion engine control. The first sensor estimates combustion variability for the purpose of controlling exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and the second sensor estimates the pressure peak position for control of ignition timing. Use of EGR in engines is important because the technique can reduce fuel consump...

Spark timing of an Internal Combustion (IC) engine is often limited by engine knock in the advanced direction. The ability to operate the engine at its advanced (borderline knock) spark limit is the key for improving output power and fuel economy. Due to combustion cycle-to-cycle variations, IC engine combustion behaves similar to a random process and so does the engine performance criteria, su...

Combustion optimization adjustment can effectively suppress NOx emissions from power plant boilers. Current combustion optimization adjustment methods involve nonlinear optimization based on the boiler combustion model, such as optimization by a genetic algorithm or particle swarm algorithm. The computational complexity of these methods results in poor real-time performance, which limits their ...

We propose a model based control strategy to adapt the injection settings according to the air path dynamics on a Diesel HCCI engine. This approach complements existing airpath and fuelpath controllers, and aims at accurately controlling the start of combustion. For that purpose, start of injection is adjusted based on a Knock Integral Model and intake manifold conditions. Experimental results ...