Controlling Cyclic Combustion Variations in Lean‐Fueled Spark‐Ignition Engines

Under conditions of lean fueling or high exhaust gas recirculation, interactions between residual cylinder gas and freshly injected fuel and air produce undesirable combustion instabilities in spark‐ignition engines. The resulting dynamics can be described as noisy bifurcations of a nonlinear map and are complicated by cylinder‐to‐cylinder coupling. We discuss the key dynamic features relevant to control and demonstrate simple feedback control of a multi‐cylinder test vehicle.