Real-time estimation of the in-cylinder pressure of combustion engines is crucial to detect failures and improve the performance of the engine control system. A new estimation scheme is proposed based on the Extended Kalman Filter, which exploits measurements of the engine rotational speed provided by a standard phonic wheel sensor. The main novelty lies in a parameterization of the combustion pressure, which is generated by averaging experimental data collected in different operating points. The proposed approach is validated on real data from a turbocharged compression ignition engine, including both nominal and off-nominal working conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed technique accurately reconstructs the pressure profile, featuring a fit performance index exceeding 90% most of the time. Moreover, it can track changes in the engine operating conditions as well as detect the presence of cylinder-to-cylinder variations.
Keywords: Kalman filter; in-cylinder pressure estimation; internal combustion engine.