Patent ID: 9068523
Filing Date: 2015-06-30
Classification: F02D,G01M,Y02T

Abstract:
1. A control apparatus for an internal combustion engine that is provided with an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) device, which recirculates a portion of exhaust gas of the internal combustion engine as EGR gas to an intake passage of the internal combustion engine, the control apparatus comprising: a cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity determining arrangement that estimates or senses a value of a cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity, which is a quantity of the EGR gas that flows into a cylinder of the internal combustion engine; a misfire predicting arrangement that predicts whether misfire occurs based on the value of the cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity and an operational state of the internal combustion engine; a misfire-avoidance control arrangement that executes at least one misfire-avoidance control operation to avoid the misfire when the misfire predicting arrangement predicts that the misfire occurs; an upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity computing arrangement that computes an upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity based on the operational state of the internal combustion engine, wherein: the upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity is an upper limit of the cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity of the EGR gas that is combustible in the cylinder without causing the misfire, and the misfire predicting arrangement predicts whether the misfire occurs by comparing the value of the cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity with the upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity; the misfire-avoidance control arrangement computes a required increase of the upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity, which is required to avoid the misfire, based on a difference between the value of the cylinder-inflow EGR gas quantity and the upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity; and the misfire-avoidance control arrangement executes the at least one misfire-avoidance control operation under a corresponding condition, which corresponds to the required increase of the upper limit inflow EGR gas quantity.