Simplified model of combustion process in a diesel engine for real-time operation

In a diesel engine, three combustion parameters, which describe the crank angle at the start of ignition, the total amount of heat release and the combustion duration can be used to control the speed, efficiency, noise and exhaust emission.Pressure analysis of a diesel engine cylinder can be used for identifying these parameters. The combustion parameters can be determined using the pressure signal and the pressure derived from a mathematical model of the combustion process. One such mathematical model of the combustion process called the Wiebe function is widely used in application. In this work, we investigated the Wiebe function and the analysis shows that the computational time to determine the combustion parameters is too high to be used in the real-time operation. Therefore, several alternative models were formulated, which are cheap in computation. Thus, these models are more suitable for real-time operation. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.