CAREER: Control of Mechatronic Automotive Propulsion Systems

本学院早期职业发展（Career）项目的研究目标是开发控制方法，使汽车推进系统从传统的机械系统转变为灵活的机电一体化系统。具体目标是提供设计工具，以确保将取代汽车推进系统中的机械部件和消除机械环节的机电执行器的精确运动控制，从而实现必要的控制手段，以最大限度地提高能量转换和动力传递效率。为实现上述目标，本文将研究基于时变内模跟踪控制的新设计方法，并在各种汽车机电系统中进行验证。如果成功，本课题将为基于内模的线性时变系统跟踪控制提供新的系统设计方法。具体而言，它将通过系统浸入提供鲁棒时变内部模型的构建，并通过利用互联工厂和内部模型的独特结构设计鲁棒稳定器。许多包含角度相关信号动力学的实际应用，如风力涡轮机，可以从所提出的控制方法中受益。特别是，这将使汽车推进系统从机械系统转变为完全灵活的机电一体化系统，从而可以完全实时控制空气、燃料和活塞动力学。这些灵活性将大大减少汽车燃料消耗和排放，并广泛推广替代燃料。该项目还将利用学生对未来汽车的广泛兴趣，帮助吸引年轻人，特别是女性和少数族裔进入工程领域。它还将促进与工业界的合作，并向广大社区传播研究成果。

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.