CAREER: Control of Mechatronic Automotive Propulsion Systems

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The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to develop control methodologies to enable the transformation of the automotive propulsion system from a traditional mechanical system into a flexible mechatronic system. The specific goal is to provide design tools to ensure precise motion control of the mechatronic actuators that will replace the mechanical components and eliminate the mechanical links in the automotive propulsion system, and therefore achieve the necessary control means to maximize the energy conversion and power transfer efficiency. To achieve the above objective, studies of new design methods for time-varying internal model based tracking control will be conducted and validated in various automotive mechatronic systems.If successful, this project will offer new systematic design methods for internal model based tracking control of linear time-varying systems. In specific, it will provide the construction of a robust time-varying internal model by means of a system immersion, and the design of a robust stabilizer by leveraging the unique structure of the interconnected plant and the internal model. Many real-world applications that contain angle dependent signal dynamics such as wind turbine could benefit from the proposed control methodology. Particularly this will enable the transformation of the automotive propulsion system from a mechanical system to a fully flexible mechatronic system where the air, fuel, and piston dynamics can be controlled with full authority in real-time. These flexibilities will enable a significant reduction of automotive fuel consumption and emissions and the wide spread of alternative fuels. The project will also help to attract young people especially women and minorities into the engineering field by leveraging the broad interests in future automobiles among students. It will also promote collaborations with industry and disseminate the research results to communities at large.