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Metal insulator silicon carbide field-effect devices, MISiC sensors, with catalytic metal gates of TaSix + Pt have been evaluated as fast linear lambda detectors. Application areas are for example engine cold start and cylinder specific lambda transient detection. The sensor is placed in the exhaust manifold system, where the branches from the different cylinders are joined. By using a linear regression model the MISiC sensor could predict a lambda value, chosen randomly as one of six values between 0.93 and 1.03. Specially built laboratory equipment, Moving Gas Outlet (MGO), was used to estimate the sensor response time.

Two spark advance control systems are outlined; both based on feedback from nonlinear neural network soft sensors and ion current detection. One uses an estimate on the location of the pressure peak and the other uses an estimate of the location of the center of combustion. Both quantities are estimated from the ion current signal using neural networks. The estimates are correct within roughly two crank angle degrees when evaluated on a cycle to cycle basis, and roughly within one crank angle degree when the quantities are averaged over consecutive cycles. The pressure peak detection based control system is demonstrated on a SAAB 9000 car, equipped with a 2.3 liter low-pressure turbo charged engine, during normal highway driving.

A robust air/fuel ratio “soft sensor” is presented based on non-linear signal processing of the ion current signal using neural networks. Care is taken to make the system insensitive to amplitude variations, due to e.g. fuel additives, by suitable preprocessing of the signal. The algorithm estimates the air/fuel ratio to within 1.2% from the correct value, defined by a universal exhaust gas oxygen (UEGO) sensor, when tested on steady state test-bench data and using the raw ion current signal. Normalizing the ion current increases robustness but also increases the error by a factor of two. The neural network soft sensor is about 20 times better in the case where the ion current is not normalized, compared with a linear model. On normalized ion currents the neural network model is about 4 times better than the corresponding linear model.

Prototypes of gas sensitive Schottky diodes with a platinum gate electrode have been fabricated on monocrystalline 6H-SiC substrates and tested on petrol engines. The sensors are mounted in the housing and on the heater of HEGO sensors. The air/fuel ratio of each cylinder is individually controlled by UHEGO sensors. Three gas sensitive SiC diodes together with another UHEGO sensor, serving as the reference sensor, are mounted into the exhaust pipe. At the operating temperature used, around 600-800°C, the SiC sensors show a large variation of the output signal for small variations of the air/fuel ratio around the stoichiometric ratio. The response time of the sensor is small enough to detect the air/fuel ratio of individual cylinders. We show how the sensor can be used to detect misfire and/or individual cylinders that deviate from stoichiometry. The SiC sensor thus shows promising potential for cylinder selective and more effective combustion control.

Spark advance setting in spark-ignited engines is used to place the in-cylinder pressure curve relative to the top dead center. It is demonstrated that ionization current interpretation is feasible to use for spark advance control to optimize engine performance. A feedback scheme, not a calibration scheme, based on ionization current is proposed. It is thus related to pressure sensor feedback schemes, that have reported good results, but have not yet proven cost effective due to the cost of the pressure sensor. The method proposed here is very cost effective since it uses exactly the same hardware and instrumentation (already used in production cars) that is used to utilize the spark plug as a sensor to detect misfire and as a sensor for knock control. The only addition for ignition control is further signal interpretation in the electronic engine control unit. A key idea in our method is to use parameterized functions to describe the ionization current.

The combustion of fuel inside an engine cylinder produces ions. By applying a small DC voltage across the spark gap after ignition, ion current is produced. The ion current wave form contains combustion information and is called Ion-Gap sense. Ion-Gap sense is described and can be used to detect misfire, control knock, obtain cam phasing, and detect pre-ignition. In the future, it will provide air/fuel information. Test results on nine different engine types are summarized for misfire detection. Knock testing is reviewed for eight engines. Engine tests associated with engine control techniques have been included.