Motor Vehicle Drive Unit Component Diagnostic Normalization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for operating motor vehicle drive devices fail to detect malfunctions in device components reliably and early, particularly due to the lack of consideration for interactions between components and changes over the component's lifetime, which can lead to deviations in exhaust gas composition and emission limits.
Innovation Solution
A method that standardizes component diagnostic values across multiple device components, determines an overall diagnostic value, and checks it against an overall setpoint range to detect common errors, using normalization rules and calculation rules to account for environmental conditions, mileage, age, and adaptive values, ensuring accurate detection of faults and compliance with emission limits.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If individual component diagnostic values are monitored separately against component-specific setpoint ranges, then the monitoring system is simple and easy to implement, but malfunctions are not detected reliably or early enough because interactions between components are ignored
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual component diagnostic values into a single overall diagnostic value by standardizing each component's diagnostic value and summing them. This combination allows the system to detect malfunctions more reliably by considering interactions between components, while the standardized approach keeps the computational complexity manageable.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms component-specific diagnostic values with different scales and units into standardized dimensionless values through normalization. This parameter change enables meaningful aggregation of diagnostic information from multiple components while accounting for their different characteristics and lifetime changes.
2Measurement precision
If component diagnostic setpoint ranges are made narrow to improve detection precision, then early malfunction detection is improved, but false detections increase due to normal variations in component performance over lifetime
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by normalizing component diagnostic values to a common scale and setting the overall diagnostic threshold at the sum of individual component thresholds. This approach adapts to normal variations in component performance over lifetime while maintaining precision in detecting actual malfunctions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates cushioning by designing the overall diagnostic system to accommodate normal variations in individual components. The standardized aggregation method provides a buffer that prevents false detections from normal component drift while still detecting genuine malfunctions when the cumulative diagnostic value exceeds the threshold.
3Reliability
If the drive device continuously monitors and processes diagnostic data from multiple components to detect interactions, then early malfunction detection is improved, but computational resources and processing time are increased
Solution Approach 1:
The patent reduces processing requirements by transforming component diagnostic values into standardized form and using a simple summation to calculate the overall diagnostic value. This parameter transformation enables efficient real-time monitoring without requiring complex computational resources for analyzing component interactions.
Data Source
Figure 1
AI summary
The invention relates to a method for operating a drive unit (1) for a motor vehicle that generates exhaust gas at least intermittently and comprises several components (2, 3, 4) that influence the composition of the exhaust gas. A component diagnostic value (5) is determined for each of the components (2, 3, 4) by means of component diagnostics, and a component diagnostic value (5) is detected if the component diagnostic value (5) deviates from a component diagnostic target value range (6) assigned to the respective component (2, 3, 4). Furthermore, the component diagnostic values (5) of several components (2, 3, 4) are normalized, an overall diagnostic value (8) is determined from the normalized component diagnostic values (7), and a deviation of the overall diagnostic value (8) from an overall diagnostic target value range (9) indicates a common fault of the several components (2, 3, 4).The invention further relates to a drive unit (1) for a motor vehicle.