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Cylinder deactivation has become common not only in large swept volume gasoline V-engines but also in cheaper highly downsized automotive engines. Cylinder deactivation strategy leads to a combination of reduced throttling and pumping losses and consequently, to CO2 emissions reduction. This is achieved by deactivation of some cylinders and by moving the operation point of the firing cylinders to higher loads to compensate for the deactivated cylinders. This paper focuses on the 1.4 litre direct injection gasoline 4-cylinder (inline) engine and the development of its deactivation strategy in the Model in the Loop (MiL) environment using the Ricardo 1-D gas real-time code ‘WAVE-RT’ as the virtual engine controlled by the engine control strategy. The engine control strategy can be easily flashed into rapid prototyping ECU and validated on the testbed.

Internal combustion engines continue to grow more complex every day out of necessity. Legislation and increasing customer demand means that advanced technologies like variable valve actuation (VVA), multi-path exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), advanced boosting, and aftertreatment systems continue to drive ever-expanding requirements for engine control to improve performance, fuel economy, and reduce emissions. Therefore, controller development and implementation are becoming more costly, both in terms of time and the monetary investment in engine hardware. To help reduce these costs, a sophisticated tool chain has been created which allows a real-time, physical, crank-angle resolved one-dimensional (1D) engine model to be implemented on a rapid prototyping engine control unit (ECU) which is then used in the control strategy of a running engine. Model-based controllers have been developed and validated to perform as well as or better than controllers using traditional sensors.