Patent ID: 7522987
Filing Date: 2009-04-21
Classification: F02D,F02M,Y02T

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for learning a deviation from a reference injection characteristic of a fuel injector and provided for a cylinder of an internal combustion engine having an output shaft, the fuel injector including a valve and an actuator operatively connected thereto, the actuator being displacable in a predetermined direction, power being generated in the cylinder based on the fuel injected from the fuel injector thereinto and being transferred to the output shaft via a mechanism so as to rotate the output shaft, the apparatus comprising: an injection executing unit configured to cause the actuator to displace in the predetermined direction so that the valve moves between an original position and a predetermined full stroke in the predetermined direction to thereby execute a plurality of fuel injections into the cylinder for a plurality of injection periods, respectively, each interval between temporally adjacent fuel injection periods in the plurality of injection periods being set to a reference minimum value; and a learning unit operatively connected to the actuator and configured to determine whether the temporally adjacent fuel injection periods are non-overlapped with each other while correcting an amount of the displacement of the actuator so as to move the valve at the predetermined full stroke in the predetermined direction, the learning unit being configured to learn, as the deviation from the reference injection characteristic of the fuel injector, the corrected amount of the displacement of the actuator at a time when the temporally adjacent fuel injection periods are non-overlapped with each other.