Adaptive Idle Speed Control for Internal Combustion Engines

The paper presents an application of a recently developed adaptive posicast controller for time-delay systems to the idle speed control (ISC) problem in internal combustion (IC) engines. The objective is to regulate the engine speed at a prescribed set-point in the presence of accessory load torque disturbances such as air conditioning and power steering. The adaptive controller, integrated with the existing proportional spark controller, is used to drive the electronic throttle as an actuator. We present both simulation and experimental results which demonstrate the potential of the adaptive controller to improve the performance. In addition, the reduction in calibration time and effort which can be achieved with our approach is discussed.