Control of recompression HCCI with a three region switching controller

Abstract

Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) presents new challenges in combustion phasing control due to the lack of direct ignition trigger. In addition, recompression HCCI possesses cycle-to-cycle coupling through trapping a large portion of the exhaust gas in the cylinder. This paper examines the change in the cycle-to-cycle coupling around different operating points in recompression HCCI and show that there are three qualitative types of temperature dynamics: smooth decaying when combustion phasing is early, oscillatory when phasing is late, and strongly converging with moderate combustion phasing. As a result, a three region switching linear model that combines three linearized models can capture the qualitative change in system characteristics. Based on this model, a three region switching controller is designed and shown in experiments that it can track a wide range of desired combustion phasing and improve the variance of combustion phasing over open-loop operations. In the last part of this paper, two semi-definite programming (SDP) formulations are presented to prove the stability of the switching control/model framework.