A derivative extremal adaptive controller with applications to rotating power systems

An adaptive extremal control system is proposed and analyzed for application to rotating power systems, such as the standard multi-cylinder internal combustion engine. The system is comprised of a test input perturbation signal, a simple on-off accelerometer for output sensing, and a bang-bang adaptive loop that provides optimum settings of engine parameters, such as ignition timing. The proposed system is simpler than previous adaptive extremal systems in the literature and it exhibits improved performance characteristics with respect to stability and recovery rates.