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Machine Learning for Air Charge Estimation: A Residual Error Approach

Christensson, Lukas (2025)
Department of Automatic Control
Abstract
Improving the efficiency of combustion engines is crucial from an environmental perspective, serving as a complement to the transition towards the electrification of transportation. To optimize combustion efficiency, the amount of air in the cylinders needs to be estimated, which today is done by gray box-models based on traditional physics. This thesis examines the possibility of complementing these classical formulas with supporting machine learning models to improve the precision of the estimation. Both a Gaussian Process Regressor (GPR) and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are trained to estimate the airflow, and Bayesian optimization is performed to optimize the structure of the models. The results show reduced residual errors for... (More)
Improving the efficiency of combustion engines is crucial from an environmental perspective, serving as a complement to the transition towards the electrification of transportation. To optimize combustion efficiency, the amount of air in the cylinders needs to be estimated, which today is done by gray box-models based on traditional physics. This thesis examines the possibility of complementing these classical formulas with supporting machine learning models to improve the precision of the estimation. Both a Gaussian Process Regressor (GPR) and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are trained to estimate the airflow, and Bayesian optimization is performed to optimize the structure of the models. The results show reduced residual errors for both models compared to the current methods. The study shows promise for utilizing machine learning models to improve combustion engine efficiency, and highlights that further studies for hardware modification and implementation are needed. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Christensson, Lukas
supervisor
organization
year
type
H3 - Professional qualifications (4 Years - )
subject
report number
TFRT-6301
other publication id
0280-5316
language
English
id
9222618
date added to LUP
2026-02-12 09:41:52
date last changed
2026-02-12 09:41:52
@misc{9222618,
  abstract     = {{Improving the efficiency of combustion engines is crucial from an environmental perspective, serving as a complement to the transition towards the electrification of transportation. To optimize combustion efficiency, the amount of air in the cylinders needs to be estimated, which today is done by gray box-models based on traditional physics. This thesis examines the possibility of complementing these classical formulas with supporting machine learning models to improve the precision of the estimation. Both a Gaussian Process Regressor (GPR) and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are trained to estimate the airflow, and Bayesian optimization is performed to optimize the structure of the models. The results show reduced residual errors for both models compared to the current methods. The study shows promise for utilizing machine learning models to improve combustion engine efficiency, and highlights that further studies for hardware modification and implementation are needed.}},
  author       = {{Christensson, Lukas}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Machine Learning for Air Charge Estimation: A Residual Error Approach}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}