Nonlinear Control of a Turbocharged Diesel Engine for Powertrain Control Applications

This paper concerns the problem of controlling a diesel engine with a variable geometry turbine (VGT). The idea presented is to use the variable geometry of the turbine for controlling the amount of inlet air and the objective is to combine air-to-fuel ratio control with engine speed or engine torque control. The nonlinear controller is designed using so called backstepping. The control strategy seems to have a great potential, since the combustion efficiency can be kept high while reducing the turbo-lag and the emission level. The control algorithms can be extended to handle powertrain control applications. The application studied here is control of driveline oscillations.