Copyright © IFAC Advances in Automotive Control ELSEVIER

SaJerno. Italy. 2004

IFAC
PUBLICATIONS
www.elsevier.comflocatelifac

IMPROVED DYNAMIC PERFORMANCE OF

TURBOCHARGED SI ENGINE VEHICLES DUE
TO CLUTCH ACTUATION

Simon A. Frei, Lino Guzzella, Christopher H. Onder

Measurement and Control Laboratory, Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology (ETH), CH-B092 Zurich,
Switzerland

Corrado NizzoIa

DaimlerChrysler AG, HPC E222, D-70546 Stuttgart,

Germany

Abstract:
This article describes two strategies developed to tackle the problem of the turbo
lag in spark-ignited turbocharged engines. A representative test case for the
dynamic behavior and a simple cost functional are derived as well.
A mean value model is used to optimize the dynamic behavior of the turbocharged
engine. This leads to two strategies which either rely on a variation in spark timing
or on an additional actuation of the clutch. The latter serves to substantially
improve the acceleration phase in terms of time and comfort both. The clutch
strategy allows a reduction of the time lag to reach 90 % of full load torque by
more than 0.9 s. Copyright © 2004 IFAC

Keywords: engine management, optimization, vehicle dynamics, torque control

1. INTRODUCTION low rotational speeds of the engine. This problem

Downsizing is one of the most promising ways of
reducing the fuel consumption of internal combus-
tion engines. By increasing the boost pressure (i. e.,
supercharging), the same maximum torque can be
achieved \vith a reduced displacement which in turn
yields lower friction and pumping losses. In addition,
as the engine is run at relatively high loads most of
the time, its efficiency is improved.
From among the various methods of supercharging
an engine, the turbocharger is used in most of the
cases. In turbocharged (TC) engines the enthalpy in
the exhaust gas is used to drive a turbine, which in
turn drives a compressor.
One drawback of the turbocharger is the lack of
boost pressure at very low mass flows, i. e., at very
can be solved with an optirnized layout of the
system. What still remains is the problem that the
turbocharger has to speed up in order to deliver
the demanded boost pressure. As the driver can feel
this time delay, known as the turbo lag, he tends
to operate the engine at higher rotational speeds
where this effect is almost undetectable. However.
this reduces the gain in fuel efficiency obtained by
downsizing the engine.
As turbocharged engines have suffered from the
turbo lag ever since their invention, many devices
have been developed to overcome this drawback.
Amongst others these are:
CVT A continuously variable transmission (Pfiff-
ner 2001).

209
ISA Integrated starter-alternator device (Zeyen 2.1 Specifications for the new agility criterion
and Pels 1997).
VTG Variable turbine geometry (up to now , for A major drawback of turbo charged engines is their
diesel engines only) (Brace et al. 1999) . uneven torque development. After the engine has
e- TC electrically supported turbocharger (Kolma- reached its underlying naturally aspirated torque it
novsky and Stefanopoulou 2001). takes a certain time to speed up the turbocharger.
e-booster An electrically driven compressor used
The new agility criterion has to reflect this im-
to blow additional air into the intake manifold in
portant time period, i. e., the first seconds of an
critical situations (Fieweger et al. 2002).
acceleration , especially when starting at low load.
All these devices achieve a better longitudinal dy-
namic behavior, but they all entail additional costs
2.1.1. Analysis of the driver 's demands The
for hardware. Therefore further investigations will
driver wants two results when hitting the driver
focus on solutions requiring few or no additional
pedal (tip-in): as much torque as possible as fast
devices.
as possible and yet very smooth and predictable.
This paper presents a strategy for significant im- The first point can be seen as a power issue whereas
provements in the dynamic behavior of the tur- the second demand is a comfort issue.
bocharged engine with standard production type
Both expectations can be fulfilled if the torque
components. It improves not only the agility of the
develops linearly with time.
vehicle, but it also increases the comfort of the
driver . Based on this desired behavior a new cost functional
can be derived. As outlined above, it is helpful to
judge agility in terms of power and comfort.
2. LONGITUDINAL DYNAMICS OF A CAR

For the description of a good dynamic behavior 2.2 Power index

there are several expressions used in literature, such
as: good transient behavior, elasticity, reaction time, Figure 1 may help to clarify the calculation of the
no turbo lag, agility, good load response or sprinting power index (pI)
capability. In this paper the longitudinal behav-
pI = 0.9 Tqe,maxlw=const - Tqe ,tipin (1)
ior will be called "agility". A number of methods
to.9 - ttipin
dealing with the quantification of the agility of a
vehicle are proposed in (Hiereth 1986, Baker et The higher the power index, the better.
al. 1989, Uthoff and Yakimow 1987). In general, the
sprinting capability is measured as follows:
2.3 Comfort index
• to-wo kmj h time to reach 100 km/ h
• to-200 kmjh for sports cars
For the quantification of the driver's comfort during
• tl km time needed for the first km
an acceleration two terms are used . The first term
The elasticity tests emphasize the full-load torque: concerns the area between the real torque trace and
a ficticious linear trace (cl 1 in Figure 1) .
• t 60 - loo kmj h in the second highest gear
• tSO-120 kmj h in the highest gear
to .9
In (List and Schoeggel 1998) a commercial product
is presented which can quantify the agility of a
cll =
l ..
t h1Hn
ITqcl ,real - Tqcl.idealldt

The second term (ch) is the highest slope of the real

(2)

vehicle . Fuzzy logic and generic algorithms are used

to find a correlation between vehicle behavior and torque trace divided by the average slope, which is
subjective impressions by the test drivers. Since this equal to the power index.
paper uses a model-based approach this procedure
is not suitable.
In SAE Cold Start and Driveability Procedure (1998)
a standard is published for quantifying driveability. The smaller these indices are, the better.
This procedure is only applicable for existing vehi-
cles and provides a general value of the driveability
of the vehicle tested. Thus this standard is not
2.4 The test case
applicable for the quantification of agility.
All these approaches have the drawback that they The test case is to show the critical situations during
grant too much weight to the shape of the full load the acceleration phase. One critical situation occurs
line, whereas they do not sufficiently consider the when the vehicle is cruising at low load in a high
dynamic torque development in the first seconds. A gear. Another one happens after a tip-in while in a
new agility criterion is thus required . small gear, where the turbo charger cannot follow

210
 0.9 Tq,._
cl
· ·/\ -
---- optima.]
state-ot-the-.
.rt

1
cl, / \

i ! -- \JI-~_
Fig. 3. Evaluation of the cost functionals for state-
Fig_ L Sketch of the application of the cost func- of-the-art engines
tionals (power and comfort) 3_ SYSTElvl ANALYSIS

3.1 The influence of the inputs on agility

the demanded fast change in rotational speed of the
engine_ The inputs to a state-of-the-art engine are listed in
In order to represent the first of these critical Table 2. Their capability to improve the agility can
situations, the following test case is defined: be described as follows :
• The ambient conditions are disturbances for
Table 1. The test case the engine system and cannot be influenced.
• Although the air-to--fuel ratio is an input , it
vehicle mid-size car
is not considered here because a catalytic con-
initial condition cruising at 60 km/ h ,
in 5th gear verter is used for the exhaust gas aftertreat-
action tip-in to full load ment, which requires a stoichiometric combus-
tion, i. e., >. = L In any case the influence of
the A/ F ratio on the agility would be small.
This test case is applied to three state-of-the-art • The wastegate and the throttle are used for the
engines: load control. The wastegate in state-ot-the-art
engines is always closed as much as possible in
• 21 naturally aspirated engine (NA)
order to keep the turbocharger speed on the
• 1.51 mechanically supercharged engine (MSC)
highest possible value. It thus cannot be used
• 1.51 turbocharged engine (TC)
for any further improvement of the agility_See
The supercharged engines are designed to reach the (Eriksson et at. 2002) for a detailed discussion.
same peak power as the N A engine_The power index
After all these constraints only two inputs remain,
is defined such that the different full-load curves
namely the spark advance and the torque from the
have no influence on the result .
clutch. Whereas the spark advance can be controlled
Figure 2 a) shows the torque development of the without any additional hardware, an automated
three engines after a tip-in. The NA engine shows clutch has to be applied in order to make the torque
the fastest torque development. The MSC engine from the clutch controllable.
is slower, since the intake manifold volumes to be
The use of these two inputs for an increased agility
filled are larger. The turbocharged state-of-the-art
will be discussed in Section 5.
engine 'With wastegate (TCsota) shows the typical
torque shape, with a short time to reach the torque Table 2. Disturbances and inputs of a
of the underlying naturally aspirated engine. After state-of-the-art engine
the speed-up of the turbocharger, it takes 1.8 s to Disturbance Variable
reach the full load torque. Ambient temperature Tamb
Ambient pressure Pamb

250
b'- Input Variable
, 1.5 Throttle angle ath
200 !. - - - Waste gate opening u"'9
E1SO ,, Spark advance t>(
~ j' 2:
~100
I -NA
Clutch activation Tqcl
0.5
50 - MSC Air-to-fuel ratio >.
- - TCsotI
0
a) 4 6 b) 'I:, .,,~
t[s}

Fig. 2. Comparison of state-of-the-art solutions

" 4. OPTIMIZATION OF THE AGILITY

4·1 Tools for optimization

Concerning the indices, the naturally aspirated en- Several ways exist to find a solution for an optimal
gine reaches the best power and the best comfort control problem. Figure 4 shows a condensed deci-
index. sion tree with some applicable tools (in capitals) .

211

optimal control problem
indirect methods direct methods
- BOUNDSOL
~
- OPTSOL
direct shooting direct colocation
- MATLAB SIMULINK - DIRCOL
-TOMP
Fig. 4. Decision tree for optimal control tools
The indirect methods rely on the underlying op-
timization theory, i. e., they depend on adjoint
variables, the Hamilton function, or the maximum
principle (e. g., by Pontryagin). This makes the
calculation often very difficult or even impossible.
The direct methods can be divided in direct shoot-
ing methods and direct collocation methods. The
former have been known since the 1960's. They use
a discretization of the input signals and fulfill the
differential equations of motion via numeric integra-
tion. The direct collocation methods discretize the
state variables as well and use collocation to satisfy
the differential equations.
As the order of the system changes when the clutch
opens or closes, the adjoint variables cannot be ex-
pressed explicitly. This renders the indirect methods
inapplicable.
As all the models are directly at hand in MATLAB®
code, this programming and simulation environment
is used for the optimization task.
4.2 The model
The complete system to be optimized is modeled
with a mean value approach. Receivers are modeled
with lumped parameters, i. e., constant temperature
and pressure. Mass and energy conservation laws
as well as the ideal gas law are used to calculate
the state of each receiver (m, p , T). A detailed
description of this method of modeling can be found
in (Muller et al. 1998).
A core component of the model is the compressor.
It is modeled using the map fitting suggested by
Jensen et al. (1991).
In order to receive good fitting results, the pressure
ratio over the compressor is expressed as a function
of the mass flow and the speed of the turbocharger .
PRc = 7re = f( m• ,Wte )
---
PR.,
For the fitting two additional variables are defined:
The head parameter:
(3)
212
and the normalized compressor flow rate:
.p =
.
me with (4)
PaT~Ue
The head parameter is then expressed as a function
of .p
(5)
where Ma is the Mach number at the ring orifice of
the compressor.
A least-square algorithm is used for the fitting of
the parameters k i . The result is shown in Figure 5.
--
",0_&-
1--1
' ~o~~~~~--~~--~--~---7,~
.........,
Fig. 5. Comparison of the measured and fitted
compressor map
For its use in the model the causality has to be
inverted, i. e.,m= f(7r e , Wte). This is achieved by
resolving Equation (5) for .p.
The head parameter is then approximated as fol-
lows:
From the fitted compressor flow rate the mass flow
can then be calculated:
m= f(if>(7r c , WTC, k i ) , WTC))
4.3 Assumptions
The results presented in Section 5 are obtained
using the following assumptions, which help to keep
the optimization problem simple.
Stiff drive train This is a conservative assump-
tion , as a drive train with elasticity will be less
critical for jerks than a stiff one.
No slip between road and wheel As the test is
executed in the 5th gear, the slip between road
and wheel can be neglected.
Vehicle speed constant As the test is executed
in the 5th gear, the mass moment of inertia of the
car, reduced to the clutch, is very high compared
to the mass moment of inertia of the engine.
Therefore it is reasonable to assume vehicle speed
to be constant. Taking the two previous assump-
tions into consideration, constant rotational speed
in the gear box (Wgb,in =~ ) can be assumed.
Fast clutch The clutch is assumed to be equipped
with an infinitely fast actuator. This simplifies
finding the solution of the optimization problem
and also provides a benchmark for what is achiev-
able .
5. STRATEGIES AND RESULTS
As derived in Section 3, only the two inputs spark
advance ~( and clutch signal Ucl can be used to
influence the agility of a car.
5.1 The ( strategy
The spark advance can be used to help speed up
the turbo charger according to the argumentation
summarized in Table 3.
Table 3. Use of spark advance for
improved agility
tip-in
spark advance towards late
- decreased combustion efficiency
- increased exhaust temperature
- higher enthalpy flow to the turbine
- higher torque development of the turbine
- faster acceleration of the turbine
=> faster increase of the intake manifold pressure
5.1 .1. Results The ( strategy has a positive effect
on the comfort indices, but yields only a minor
improvement of the power index.
Figure 6 shows an almost perfect ramp for the
torque development (TCO when the ( strategy is
applied. However, the time gain is only 0.1 s.
With the ( strategy the torque of the engine is re-
duced considerably, whereas the increased tempera-
ture of the exhaust gas can only partly be converted
to torque at the turbine. This small improvement is
due to the fact that the energy "invested" to speed
up the turbocharger cannot be recovered .
5.2 The clutch strategy
In the clutch strategy we use the fact that a higher
mass flow through the turbine results in a higher
turbine speed. The argumentation is outlined in
Table 4.
This strategy has yet another advantage . As the
clutch is opened the engine speed increases and
kinetic energy can be stored in the engine's mass
moment of inertia (ee) .
When the clutch is closed according to this strategy
this kinetic energy flows back to the gearbox. The
torque working on the gear box (Tqcl) is the dif-
ference between the torque delivered at the crank
shaft (Tqcs) and the d 'Alembert torque resulting
from changes in the rotational speed.
213
Table 4. Use of the clutch for an improved
agility of a vehicle
tip-in
controlled clutch opening
- increased engine speed
~ higher mass flow through the engine
~ increased pressure in the exhaust manifold
~ higher mass flow through the turbine
~ higher torque development of the turbine
- faster acceleration of the turbine
=> faster increase of the intake manifold pressure
When the clutch is closed the engine speed We drops
(dwe/ dt < 0) and therefore the clutch torque (Tqcl )
is increased.
This allows the engine to deliver already the full-
load torque even though the combustion part cannot
yet deliver its steady-state value . Opening the clutch
thus allows to emulate a continuously variable trans-
mission.
5.2.1 . Results From among the different ways of
parametrizing the optimal system input , a ramp
with rounded edges proved to be optimal. The
torque development resulting from the optimal tra-
jectory is shown in Figure 6 (TCopt). The torque is
very close to the desired ramp. At the beginning the
optimized torque is lower than the torque from the
state-of-the-art strategy (TCsota). As the uneven
torque development is no longer visible, the optimal
torque finally exceeds the one obtained with the
state-of-the-art strategy. The additional torque can
be delivered from the faster turbocharger speed-up
and the energy stored in mass moment of inertia of
the engine.
The time to reach 90 % of the torque is improved
considerably and is 0.9 s shorter than with the
original strategy. The power index is still far below
that of the NA engine, but it is better than that of
the MSC engine (Figure 7).
With the optimized clutch strategy the comfort
index is very small and therefore indicates good be-
havior. The torque becomes linear and predictable
for the driver.
The energy absorbed by the clutch during the
acceleration phase is 0.22 1/ mm 2 • This is far less
than the mechanical limit of 1.2 1/ mm 2 published in
(WinkeJmann and Hartmuth 1985).
The clutch strategy yields a short rise of the engine
speed (see Figure 8).
5.3 Emissions
The emissions resulting from these strategies were
not modeled, but some qualitative statements can
still be made. In a spark ignited engine the spark ad-
vance ( is amongst others used to control emissions,
 A '00., which corresponds to a 50 % improvement compared
2~1 .--~' -- 1.5 t
to the base case. This result is achievable by opening
e:
, /
-,!.. - - -
~
~'OO
1/
;r .·
,
-NA
-
- -
MSC
TCsota
-
,I 0.9s and closing the clutch during the acceleration phase
in a suitable manner.
' ;' / O.st
~ - TC;
- TCopt
0
.)
4 6
q.)
b)
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~

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~

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300
-;; 200
I ,~
~
0'--------
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214