Patent ID: 7051710

Claim:
A device for controlling an internal combustion engine, comprising: a control unit to determine, with a torque model, at least one of at least one instantaneous torque variable and at least one actuating variable of the internal combustion engine from a setpoint value, wherein the torque model includes at least one basic variable that is determined under predefined standard conditions and is corrected as a function of an actual setting of the internal combustion engine, and the basic variable represents an optimum torque, which is corrected by an efficiency for a conversion of chemical energy into mechanical energy; and determining the efficiency as a function of a deviation between an optimum ignition angle and an instantaneous ignition angle and an additional variable representing a combustion performance of a mixture, wherein to determine the efficiency, various characteristics of the efficiency with respect to the ignition-angle deviation are weighted differently as a function of a position of the optimum ignition angle.