Robust Passive Fault Tolerant Control for Air Fuel Ratio Control of Internal Combustion Gasoline Engine for Sensor and Actuator Faults

Abstract

This paper presents a novel Passive Fault Tolerant Control System (PFTCS) for Air Fuel Ratio (AFR) control system of the Internal Combustion (IC) gasoline engine to prevent its shutdown. A Proportional plus Integral (PI) controller with high feedback gain is implemented to control AFR by introducing a fuel throttle valve in the fuel line of the engine. The salient feature of the proposed controller is its less complex structure due to the absence of Analytical Redundancy (AR). Dual redundancy in the hardware is suggested for the sensors to prevent tripping in case of coincident faults in multiple sensors and for the actuator assembly to confiscate a single point of failure. The robustness of the proposed PFTCS is tested by introducing noise in the sensor measurements. MATLAB / Simulink environment simulation results demonstrate that the proposed PFTCS is robust to faults in normal as well as noisy conditions of the sensors without any degradation of AFR. The stability analysis of the proposed controller is performed by determining the poles of the closed-loop system. The reliability analysis of the proposed controller has been performed by calculating the probabilistic reliability function of the model. The comparison of the proposed model with the existing models has also been carried out to elaborate its effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Air Fuel Ratio Control
• IC gasoline engine
• Passive Fault Tolerant Control
• Redundant assembly
• Robust control

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank to colleagues for suggessions to improve the paper quality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arslan Ahmed Amin

Arslan Ahmed Amin received BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering with specialization in control systems from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. He also holds MBA degree with specialization in ‘Management’ from Virtual University of Pakistan. He possesses more than 10 years of relevant industrial and academic experience in Pakistan’s reputed organizations: Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL), National Textile University (NTU), and FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences. He has achieved various academic distinctions such as overall top in BISE Faisalabad, standing among top 10 students in UET Lahore in BSc program, and selection for the prestigious Fulbright PhD USA scholarship. He has numerous publications in the International prestigious impact factor peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include fault-tolerant control systems, control systems’ reliability, safety control systems, non-linear control, and control system stability and design.

Khalid Mahmood-ul-Hasan

Khalid Mahmood-ul-Hasan earned his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Bradford, UK in 1999. He is currently serving as professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan. He has taught numerous courses at both graduate and undergraduate level and is supervising MSc and PhD students. His research interests include electrical machine drives, power electronics and process control. Email: [email protected]