Model Based Monitoring and Control in Automotive and Manufacturing Applications

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The applicant's research interests span the areas of automation, manufacturing technologies, and smart materials. The proposal focuses on three practical industrial applications: electromagnetic valve actuation (EVA) for internal combustion engines, more reliable piezoelectric fuel injectors, and high speed contouring of computer numerical control (CNC) machines.EVA aims to replace the camshafts in internal combustion engines. Although this technology promises to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by more than 15%, its reliability and cost has been prohibitive. Previously, the applicant designed a novel EVA system that is easier to control and that provides more flexible valve lift profiles than conventional EVA systems. He will now optimize this system in order to achieve twice the efficiency at half its original size. These changes will make the new EVA system suitable for use in commercial engines.The applicant's second project aims to improve the reliability and accuracy of piezoelectric fuel injectors. Even though piezoelectric injectors can provide superior dynamics compared to conventional electromagnetic injectors, their performance changes with temperature and aging. These changes compromise the efficiency of engines with piezoelectric injectors. The applicant will develop new monitoring techniques to measure temperature, position, and injector health from the voltage and current signals used to drive the injector. The outcome of this work will improve the reliability and efficiency of automotive engines.The third project of this program focuses on improving the accuracy and speed of high speed CNC machines such as laser machining centres. The aim here is to design a control system that automatically maximizes the speed of the cutting operation. This is a difficult problem where constraints from the structure of the machine, the type of drives chosen, the tool-path required, and external disturbances all have to be taken into account. Benefactors of this technology are both machine tool builders and manufacturing industries.