applied sciences Article Artificial Intelligence for the Prediction of Exhaust Back Pressure Effect on the Performance of Diesel Engines Vlad Fernoaga 1 , Venetia Sandu 2,* and Titus Balan 1 1 Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Transilvania University, Brasov 500036, Romania;
[email protected] (V.F.);
[email protected] (T.B.) 2 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Transilvania University, Brasov 500036, Romania * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +40-268-474761 Received: 11 September 2020; Accepted: 15 October 2020; Published: 21 October 2020 Featured Application: This paper presents solutions for smart devices with embedded artificial intelligence dedicated to vehicular applications. Virtual sensors based on neural networks or regressors provide real-time predictions on diesel engine power loss caused by increased exhaust back pressure. Abstract: The actual trade-off among engine emissions and performance requires detailed investigations into exhaust system configurations. Correlations among engine data acquired by sensors are susceptible to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven performance assessment. The influence of exhaust back pressure (EBP) on engine performance, mainly on effective power, was investigated on a turbocharged diesel engine tested on an instrumented dynamometric test-bench. The EBP was externally applied at steady state operation modes defined by speed and load. A complete dataset was collected to supply the statistical analysis and machine learning phases—the training and testing of all the AI solutions developed in order to predict the effective power. By extending the cloud-/edge-computing model with the cloud AI/edge AI paradigm, comprehensive research was conducted on the algorithms and software frameworks most suited to vehicular smart devices.