Adaptive Tracking Control of a Common Rail Injection System for Gasoline Engines: A Discrete-Time Integral Minimal Control Synthesis Approach

Over the last decade, gasoline direct injection engines have proven to be a promising solution to reduce both emission and fuel consumption. The achievement of superior performance strongly relies on its fuel injection system based on the common rail (CR) device. In order to tame the CR pressure dynamics without any a priori knowledge of the plant parameters, we design a novel model reference adaptive control strategy that extends the discrete-time minimal control synthesis algorithm. Indeed, an explicit discrete-time adaptive integral action is added to improve closed-loop performance. Experimental results support the analytical proof of stability, and confirm the effectiveness of the novel algorithm to solve both the regulation and the tracking control problem in a wide range of working conditions. The closed-loop performance is quantitatively evaluated via engineering indices.