2010 International Conference on Digital Manufacturing & Automation

Design for Control System of Wastegate Valve Actuator in Turbocharger

Liu Xinghua,Yu Lei, Liu Fushui,Wu Wenfeng, Wang Ruwei

Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China yulei019@bit.edu.cn

AbstractThis paper has designed a set of control system of wastegate valve actuator in turbocharger, it enables the wastegate valve regulate the exhaust flow before turbo automatically according to the operating condition of engine, so it can lower the pressure ratio and prevent the compressor surge occurrence when the compressor is in small flow. In this paper, it elaborated the regulation principles using wastegate valve, designed the electronic control unit and simulation system and tested the function and reliability of the whole control system. Key words-wastegate valve; electronic control; design; test

I.

INTRODUCTION

wastegate valve. Structurally, wastegate valve is a kind of bypass valve installed in the turbo, and it needs to specially design the valve bore, valve plate, and actuator, the mechanical valve usually adapt air valve as actuator. As shown in figure 1, there is working stability boundary in the compressor flow characteristics curve, it is called surge boundary. When the compressor is working in the right area of the curve, its working condition is stable; when the compressor is working in the left area of the curve, the surge will occur, it may cause the damage of compressor components, for example, the blade damage. Surge is a kind of dangerous condition, so it is not allowed. A. The regulation principle of the mechanical valve The regulation principle of the mechanical valve is lowering the compressor rotation speed when compressor flow decreases, it makes the compressor performance curve drop away from the surge boundary, and keep the outlet pressure constant [3].

At present, the vast majority of high-power diesel engines are equipped with exhaust turbocharged system. After supercharging, it can greatly improve the engine power and the engines fuel economy, also reduce emissions. Supercharging has become one of the most effective methods to strengthen the engine. In the process of matching of turbocharger and engine, it usually chooses the supercharger at maximum torque point in order to improve the torque characteristics. In order to prevent the supercharging system compressor surge from occurring in small flow and improve the engine's low speed performance, it has designed wastegate valve before the turbo. Through the regulation of valve, a part of exhaust flows into the engine exhaust pipe directly without doing work to turbo, so it reduces the energy through turbo and prevents the compressor surge [1]. The valves opening degree decides the exhaust volume bypass the turbo, the opening pressure of wastegate valve at present is fixed by adjusting the actuator spring force previously, although this method can achieve an effect which preventing compressor surge largely, but the opening degree may be inadequate or excessive and opening time of the valve is not proper. With the development of electronic technology, more and more electronic control technology are applied in automobiles. Therefore, the paper adapted the electronic technology to control the opening of wastegate valve by controlling position of actuator stem, it can adjust the exhaust flow bypass the turbo according to the need of engine condition. II. THE WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TURBOCHARGER WITH WASTEGATE VALVE In order to improve the engine's low-speed performance, it usually uses the turbocharger with

Figure 1. The regulation diagram of wastegate valve

Through the reasonable matching of turbocharger and engine and installing wastegate valve before turbo, compressor surge can be avoided effectively. Whether the valve open or not and opening degree is decided by the pressure difference which acts at actuator diaphragm. The pressure source of actuator comes from the outlet of compressor, and the opening pressure of valve is set by the spring. As shown in figure 1, when the compressor flow decreases, the working point of compressor moves from A to A1. At this moment, the compressor outlet pressure is higher than the opening pressure of valve, in other words, the compressor outlet pressure is higher than the spring force, so the stem will extend, the valve opens at the same time. Consequently, part of exhaust bypass

978-0-7695-4286-7/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICDMA.2010.110

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the turbo into the exhaust pipe without doing work to turbo, it leads to the compressor rotation speed lowering, in the figure 1, the working point moves from A1 to B, and it avoids the compressor surge. The adjusting process shows that the mechanical valve judges the beginning of adjusting only by the compressor outlet pressure, namely once the compressor outlet pressure is higher than spring force, the valve will open. This method is not accurate in judging the compressor working point, so it may be difficult to achieve the effect which is described above. Besides, the setting of spring force is a kind of limit to compressor performance, as shown in figure 1, most of area above the opening pressure line is still the highly efficient and safe area, it is not favorable for high speed and large load. When the engine is working in high speed and large load condition, it needs higher pressure inlet air to meet the needs of oil and air mixing and combustion, namely the higher pressure is the better if there is no surge occurrence. While the opening pressure of mechanical valve is fixed in advance, so it cannot satisfy the needs of engine condition. B. The regulation principle of the electronic control valve The electronic valve is a kind of valve which its actuator is controlled by a set of electronic control system, the changing of extending length of actuator stem is realized by changing the pressure applied on the actuator diaphragm. By applying the electronic control technology to the valve, it can realize the precise and flexible control to the opening time and opening degree of valve. After applying electronic control technology, the spring force should be set at a low force, the applying time is decided by electronic unit. The control strategy added in engine load, rotation speed, compressor outlet pressure, and it needed to demarcate MAP which showed aim pressure changed with engine load, rotation speed previously. It adapted PID algorithm to control the turbocharged pressure, thus, with the help of electronic system, the valve can be adjusted constantly and precisely according to engine condition (it means the valve is closed when the opening degree is 0), it is no longer limited to opening pressure. As the spring force is smaller than the smallest compressor outlet pressure, the control system can play a role in the whole compressor working area. Applying electronic control technology to the valve, not only it can judge the compressor working point precisely, avoid the opening degree inadequate or excessive and opening time improper, guarantee that the compressor works safely and efficiently and keep high compressor outlet pressure as far as possible.

III.

THE CONTROL SYSTEM COMPOSITION

1. Turbocharger 2. Solenoid valve 1 3. Solenoid valve 2 4. Wastegate valve actuator Figure 2. The diagram of control system

The control system consists of electronic control unit and actuator driving unit. The electronic unit is in charge of receiving judging parameters from engine ECU, sending control signals to solenoid valve 1 and solenoid valve 2 in the driving unit. Under the coordination of the two solenoid valve, the pressure on the actuator can be changed, and the actuator stem will be stay in a position under the effect of pressure and spring force. The two parts control the actuator together. The diagram of control system is shown in figure 2. A. Actuator driving unit The actuator driving unit consists of control unit, solenoid valves, pipes and joints. The control object actually is the pressure applied on the actuator, while the output signals which the electronic control unit send are a kind of voltage signals. To solve this problem, the conventional solution is exerting MCU to drive solenoid valve as an indirectly control. Therefore, this paper selected two two/two way normally closed solenoid valves, and designed the base for the two solenoid valve, so actually we got a new three/three way valve. The real product is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. The real product diagram

In the process of working, the electronic control unit sent the control signals to solenoid valves, the valves make actions in accordance with the signals. The normally closed solenoid valve means that the valve is closed if there is no signal applied on it. As shown in figure 2, the pressure which connected to solenoid valve 1

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comes from compressor outlet, in the control unit, the solenoid 1 connected with solenoid 2 and actuator pressure end. While it is working, the electronic control unit computes the aim position of actuator stem in accordance with engine rotation speed, load and air intake pipe pressure, and sends the control signals to solenoid valve 1 and solenoid 2, the two valves cooperate with each other to control the position of valve stem. If the valve stem needs to extend, namely the pressure needs to be higher than spring force, it needs to open solenoid valve 1 and keep solenoid valve 2 closed, at this time, the compressor outlet pressure directly applies on the actuator, the stem will extend; if the valve stem needs to be withdrawn, namely the pressure needs to be lower than spring force, it needs to open solenoid valve 2 and keep solenoid valve 1 closed, so the pressure applied on the actuator will disappear, the valve stem will be withdrawn. Actually, it needs to operate the two valves frequently, the two valves cooperate with each other to control the stretch length of stem. B. The electronic control unit 1) The hardware part The electronic control unit is the most important part in control system, its mission is processing the signals which are received from CAN bus, deciding the control quantity through computing, and sending the control signals to actuator driving unit. The signals received from CAN bus are engine rotation speed, load and air intake pipe pressure. According to the requirements of whole design, the hardware of electronic control unit was based on Infineon XC167CI-16F, and designed peripheral circuits to realize the functions. The diagram of hardware structure is shown in figure 4.

timers. When the setting value matched with timers, capture / compare unit would output the signal. 2) The control software

Figure 5. The flowchart of control program

Figure 4. The diagram of hardware structure

For the extension needs of the future, this paper has chosen the high performance MCU Infineon XC167CI-16F as the core of electronic control unit. XC167CI-16F is 16-bit microcontroller developed by Infineon corporation, for the need of high performance real-time embedded system. The judging parameters which the electronic control unit based on is received from CAN bus, the parameters are engine rotation speed, load and air intake pipe pressure. The working voltage of MCU is 5V, the input voltage of core logic and crystal oscillator is 2.5V. According to the need of vehicle electronic control system configuration, the supplying voltage is +12V, so it needs to be converted. The paper used 7805 to convert +12V to +5V and followed LM1117-2.5 to convert +5V to +2.5V. The electronic control unit used the function of Capture/Compare to generate voltage signals to solenoid valves. There are two familiar capture/compare units in XC167CI-16F MCU, each capture / compare unit provides 16 channels working closely with the two
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The control software is the core of electronic control unit. It used Keil C51 development software which matching with Infineon MCU, used C language to program. The program consists of main program, capture / compare program, CAN communication program. The flowchart is shown in figure 5. CAN communication unit is used to communicate with engine ECU. Engine ECU sends the extension frame with 29-bit identifier at 500k baud rate to the electronic control unit, the content includes engine rotation speed, load and air intake pipe pressure; the intake pipe pressure is the control objective in the main program, when the pressure is higher than objective value, the wastegate valve will open to bypass some exhaust, then the pressure will drop, and it will control the pressure around the objective value, according this three parameters, the program inquired the objective pressure in accordance with present engine condition in the way of table lookup, the table should be demarcated previously, then according to the present pressure, the main program computed the PWM value in the way of incremental PID algorithm, then sent the result to engine ECU for diagnosis; the capture / compare unit was the final executor, every some intervals it would go into the interrupt service routine, the capture / compare program would output the pulse signals according to the PWM value computed in main program to control the corresponding solenoid valve. This control method makes the compressor work in high performance areas, but also avoid compressor surge. 3) Real-time monitor system For the purpose of monitoring the operating condition of electronic control unit, reducing the time of adjusting PID and demarcating MAP, the paper has developed real-time monitor system, it can change the control parameters on line and increase working efficiency greatly. The monitor system consists of upper computer monitoring platform and communication module between upper computer monitoring platform and lower computer ECU. Upper computer monitoring platform was

programmed with C++Builder, the lower computer ECU was developed by Keil uVision 3 IDE which was programmed with C language. Upper computer monitoring platform communicated with lower computer ECU through CAN bus. The interface of real-time monitor system consists of module configuration, frame format configuration, system monitor and control parameter. The function of module configuration part is to configure the communication module for matching different communication protocol; the function of frame format configuration is to set the data frame format; system monitor part is used to monitor the control parameters and record the changing track so that people can observe the effect of adjusting; the function of control parameter part is to display the MAP and PID parameters and modify the values on line, and the modifying process is completed with the help of CAN communication module. Through the interface of real-time monitor system, people can observe the control parameters and adjusting effect of control system, and it has ability to modify the MAP and PID parameters on line so that it will reduce the adjusting time greatly and saving lots of resources. IV. DEBUG BY SIMULATION AND RELIABILITY VERIFICATION

compressor to generate pressure to force the actuator stem, and the pressure could change according to need. People can observe adjusting effect by changing the engine condition and adjust PID parameters in advance so that it reduced the laboratory periods on real engine. Place the system under limiting conditions, namely 120 which the highest temperature around the engine, 0.4MPa which is the highest compressor outlet pressure, work 200h continuously, in order to verify the reliability under the limiting conditions. The result shows that the control system can control the wastegate valve opening degree rapidly and reliably according to engine condition, and the control system has passed through the reliability verification, so it has achieved the design goals. V. z CONCLUSIONS

The paper has developed the simulation system for the purpose of increasing test efficiency, reducing the laboratory periods, and verifying the reliability of control system. The simulation part can simulate the engine condition and send parameters to electronic control unit through CAN bus. The hardware of simulation system is based on Infineon XC167CI-16F evaluation suit and utilizes the A/D converter module and CAN communication module. In the process of simulation, three potentiometers were used to simulate the engine rotation, load and air intake pipe pressure respectively, A/D converter module converted the three parameter into digital quantity and sent the digital quantity to upper computer platform through CAN bus. Using a vacuum pump instead of

The paper has designed a set of control system, it can adjust the opening degree of wastegate valve automatically according to engine condition. So the turbocharger can work in the whole highly efficient area of compressor. Using C language to program, the control program is brief and clear; using C++Builder language to program the interface of real-time monitor platform, the monitor platform can modify MAP and PID parameters on line and observe the adjusting effect. The paper has developed a set of simulation system to verify the function of control system and reliability, the result shows that the control system can meet the requirements. REFERENCES

[1]. Zhou longbao, Theory of Internal Combustion Engines, Beijing CHINA MACHINE PRESS, 2005. [2]. Liu yunxing. The Analysis of Low speed effect factors in the process of Turbocharger with Wastegate valve and diese matching , Design & Manufacture of Diesel Engine, pp. 46-47, 2005(2). [3]. Qiu jingang. Surge Analysis and Countermeasure of Large-scale Booster Set, GM in Petroleum & Chemical Industry pp. 25-28, 2010(2).

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