Hybrid fault tolerant control for air–fuel ratio control of internal combustion gasoline engine using Kalman filters with advanced redundancy

In this paper, a hybrid fault tolerant control system is proposed for air–fuel ratio control of internal combustion gasoline engines based on Kalman filters and triple modular redundancy. Hybrid fault tolerant control system possesses properties of both active fault tolerant control system and passive fault tolerant control system. As part of active fault tolerant control system, fault detection and isolation unit is designed using Kalman filters to provide estimated values of the sensors to the engine controller in case of faults in the sensors. As part of passive fault tolerant control system, a dedicated proportional–integral feedback controller is incorporated to maintain air–fuel ratio by adjusting the throttle actuator in the fuel supply line in faulty and noisy conditions for robustness to faults and sensors’ noise. Redundancy is proposed in the sensors and actuators as a simultaneous failure of more than one sensor, and failure of the single actuator will cause the engine shutdown. Advanced redundancy protocol triple modular redundancy is proposed for the sensors and dual redundancy is proposed for actuators. Simulation results in the MATLAB Simulink environment show that the proposed system remains stable during faults in the sensors and actuators. It also maintains air–fuel ratio without any degradation in the faulty conditions and is robust to noise. Finally, the probabilistic reliability analysis of the proposed model is carried out. The study shows that the proposed hybrid fault tolerant control system with redundant components presents a novel and highly reliable solution for the air–fuel ratio control in internal combustion engines to prevent engine shutdown and production loss for greater profits.