Torque ratio concept for combustion phasing detection of a spark ignited engine

This paper presents a method for estimating combustion phasing of a five cylinder, four stroke, spark ignited engine, equipped with a crankshaft based torque sensor. A new measure for combustion phasing based on the torque signal is derived for a single cylinder engine. The measure is called 50% torque ratio. A validation of the measure is done by comparing to the related cylinder pressure based 50% pressure ratio measure. A method is also presented to apply the torque ratio measure to a multi-cylinder engine. A physical model for the instantaneous torque measurement is described handling the torque contributions from all individual cylinders in all combustion phases. The torque contribution from the combusting cylinder is isolated and analyzed by the torque ratio method to find the combustion phasing. The multi-cylinder algorithm is validated on torque and cylinder pressure data from a five cylinder Volvo V70 engine.