Development and Demonstration of Control Strategies for a Common Rail Direct Injection Armoured Fighting Vehicle Engine

The development of a controller which can be used for engines used in armoured fighting vehicles is discussed. This involved choosing a state of the art reference common rail automotive Diesel engine and setting-up of a transient engine testing facility. The dynamometer through special real-time software was controlled to vary the engine speed and throttle position. The reference engine was first tested with its stock ECU and its bounds of operation were identified. Several software modules were developed in-house in stages and evaluated on special test benches before being integrated and tested on the reference engine. Complete engine control software was thus developed in Simulink and flashed on to an open engine controller which was then interfaced with the engine. The developed control software includes strategies for closed loop control of fuel rail pressure, boost pressure, idle speed, coolant temperature based engine de-rating, control of fuel injection timing, duration and number of injections per cycle based on engine speed and driver input. The developed control algorithms also facilitated online calibration of engine maps and manual over-ride and control of engine parameters whenever required. The software was further tuned under transient conditions on the actual engine for close control of various parameters including rail pressure, idling speed and boost pressure. Finally, the developed control strategies were successfully demonstrated and validated on the reference engine being loaded on customised transient cycles on the transient engine testing facility with inputs based on military driving conditions. The developed controller can be scaled up for armoured fighting vehicle engines.