We present an industrial case study in automotive control of significant complexity: the new common-rail fuel-injection system for Diesel engines under development at Magneti Marelli Powertrain. In this system, an inlet metering valve, inserted before the high pressure (HP) pump, regulates the fuel flow that supplies the common rail according to the engine operating point (e. g., engine speed and desired torque). The standard approach in automotive control based on a mean-value model for the plant does not provide a satisfactory solution as the discrete-continuous interactions in the fuel injection system, due to the slow time-varying frequency of the HP pump cycles and the fast sampling frequency of sensing and actuation, play a fundamental role. We present a design approach based on a hybrid model of the Magneti Marelli Powertrain common-rail fuel-injection system for four-cylinder multi-jet engines and a hybrid approach to the design of a rail pressure controller. The hybrid controller performs significantly better when compared with the classical mean-value based approach.
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