Patent ID: 8484955

Claim:
A method of estimating an amount of particulate matter accumulated in a particulate filter of an exhaust system, the method comprising: initializing a control processor, including preloading a memory location with a plurality of hybrid models; wherein each of the plurality of hybrid models is configured to estimate an amount of particulate matter accumulated in the particulate filter between a pair of operating points, as a function of at least one operating condition; temporarily storing in the memory location a soot estimation value corresponding to an estimated amount of particulate matter accumulated in the particulate filter; estimating, at one of the pair of operating points, an amount of particulate matter accumulated in the particulate filter between the pair of operating points for each of the plurality of hybrid models; adding, via the control processor, each of the estimated amounts of particulate matter accumulated in the particulate filter between the pair of operating points to the soot estimation values stored in the corresponding memory location for each of the plurality of hybrid models to provide a soot estimation value of a cumulative estimated amount of particulate matter contained in the particulate filter for each of the plurality of hybrid models; selecting one of the plurality of hybrid models; adding the estimated amount of particulate matter accumulated in the particulate filter between the pair of operating points of the selected one of the plurality of hybrid models to the soot estimation value stored in the memory location that corresponds to a ranked hybrid model to provide a soot estimation value of a cumulative estimated amount of particulate matter contained in the particulate filter for the ranked hybrid model; and regenerating the particulate filter based on one of the plurality of hybrid models and the ranked hybrid model.