US 6,564,623 B2Granted

Method for determining the top dead center of an internal combustion engine

AssigneeK.K. Holding AG

InventorMarkus Zanetti

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Abstract

With the present method, after calibrating the rotary position transducer employed for direct TDC determination, the pressure curve inside the cylinder and the directly measured TDC timing in various operating states and if necessary different engine-specific parameters are recorded simultaneously, correlated as discrete value pairs and stored as a data set. With one part of the data set a knowledge-based system is trained and varied till the TDC timing output for all operating states and engine types considered agrees with a TDC time previously measured directly, within the desired accuracy. To detect the TDC from the pressure curve inside the cylinder with unkown and possibly different engine types, measured pressure values are put into the knowledge-based system unaltered after training, at whose output the required TDC is given.

Claims6

Dependent claims

A method for exactly determining the top dead center of an internal combustion engine having a piston, cylinder, and crankshaft from pressure inside the cylinder, comprising the steps of:

directly measuring the top dead center as a function of crankshaft angle;
measuring pressure values in the cylinder as a function of crankshaft angle for selected operating points of the engine;
correlating and storing the respective pressure value and top dead center measurements as digitized value pairs in a data set;
inputting the data set into a knowledge based system which produces an output for the occurrence of top dead center;
training the knowledge based system with elements from the data set until the knowledge based system recognizes, from the pressure value inside the cylinder, the associated top dead center obtained from the direct measurement at all the selected operating points;
and
determining the top dead center from only the measured pressure value in the cylinder, at operating points not used during training, using the knowledge-based system as trained without further training.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 09/733,958Filed 12 Dec 2000
Priority: CH 2297/9915 Dec 1999
Published: US 2001/0006004 A15 Jul 2001
Granted: 20 May 2003
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification10 codes

F02D 35/023
On interior conditions: by determining the cylinder pressure
F02D 41/009
Electrical control of supply of combustible mixture or its constituents: using means for generating position or synchronisation signals
G01L 23/30
Details or accessories: means for indicating consecutively positions of pistons or cranks of internal-combustion engines in combination with…
F02B 3/06
Engines characterised by air compression and subsequent fuel addition: with compression ignition