Patents by Inventor Donald P. Kultgen

Donald P. Kultgen has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 10012170
    Abstract: A method for detecting a closing time of an injector valve includes receiving a valve current profile of the injector valve, processing the valve current profile using at least a slope discriminator, determining a stuck status and a closing time (if applicable) of the injector valve based on an output of the slope discriminator. An engine control unit configured to detect a closing time of an injector valve is also provided. The engine control unit has a first control logic configured to receive a valve current profile of the injector valve, a second control logic configured to process the current profile using at least a slope discriminator, and a third control logic configured to determine a stuck status and a closing time of the injector valve based on an output of the slope discriminator. Further, a vehicle system including a controller configured to detecting a valve closing time is provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2015
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2018
    Assignee: Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Ningsheng Qiao, Donald P Kultgen, Pascal Barbier
  • Publication number: 20160305360
    Abstract: A method for detecting a closing time of an injector valve includes receiving a valve current profile of the injector valve, processing the valve current profile using at least a slope discriminator, determining a stuck status and a closing time (if applicable) of the injector valve based on an output of the slope discriminator. An engine control unit configured to detect a closing time of an injector valve is also provided. The engine control unit has a first control logic configured to receive a valve current profile of the injector valve, a second control logic configured to process the current profile using at least a slope discriminator, and a third control logic configured to determine a stuck status and a closing time of the injector valve based on an output of the slope discriminator. Further, a vehicle system including a controller configured to detecting a valve closing time is provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 17, 2015
    Publication date: October 20, 2016
    Inventors: Ningsheng Qiao, Donald P. Kultgen, Pascal Barbier
  • Patent number: 6885932
    Abstract: A method and system for a misfire detection acquires (301) a series of acceleration data (302) representative of acceleration behavior of an engine. The data is sampled (304) to obtain acceleration data samples at a rate sufficient to obtain up to fourth-order perturbations of the data. The samples are filtered (322) to provide bandwidth limited samples, which are provided to at least two channels (325, 329). The samples are pattern matched (332) in a first channel to enhance harmonic phenomena and pattern canceled (330) in a second channel to enhance random phenomena. Hard and random misfires are detected (334) dependent on a magnitude of the filtered acceleration data samples. Preferably, a third channel (335) is added to detect multiple misfires.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 8, 2003
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2005
    Assignee: Motorola, Inc.
    Inventors: Louis Yizhang Liu, Richard J. Gilbert, Donald P. Kultgen, Jeffrey D. Naber, Hanlong Yang