JP3435773B2 - Vehicle failure diagnosis device - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a vehicle failure diagnosis device and method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When diagnosing a vehicle failure, if a failure occurs while the vehicle is running and the vehicle cannot be stopped as it is, the driver is appropriate after finishing the running or when it is convenient. It is usual to bring the vehicle to the dealer to inspect the vehicle at any time in order to fix the failure. In such a case, it may be possible to easily find the cause of the failure from the output of the sensor or the like, but it is empirically known that there is a failure state that cannot be easily reproduced even if the dealer tries to reproduce the failure. There is. The reason for this is that there are various causes of vehicle failure, and there is something that does not occur unless the operating state of a particular vehicle, such as temperature or speed, reaches a predetermined state. Further, such a failure is often difficult to find even when the vehicle is inspected with the engine stopped or even when the engine is operated.
However, some of these failures may have serious consequences if left untreated, so it is necessary to properly detect and diagnose. In order to properly detect and diagnose such a failure, it is necessary to widely collect and analyze various data while the vehicle is traveling.

From such a point of view, the operating state of the engine and other vehicles while the vehicle is running, such as a flight recorder of an aircraft, is monitored, and the operating state of the vehicle when the vehicle is running abnormal or malfunctions is recorded. Devices, so-called drive recorders, are known. An example of such a drive recorder is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 60-98153.
In the disclosed drive recorder, the operating state of the engine is stored as pattern data in time series, and the stored data is used to diagnose the state of the engine. In order to find the cause of the above-mentioned failure, it is convenient to analyze the information recorded in time series on the drive recorder. However, since the recording medium used for recording information has a finite capacity, it will be filled up by recording a certain amount of information, so the recorded portion will be erased and new information will be written again there. It will be. That is, the drive recorder can only record information required for a certain traveling time. In the conventional drive recorder, when a failure occurs, writing of new information is stopped, and the states of various devices, accessories, and sensors for a predetermined period immediately before the failure are recorded.

[0004]

Therefore, when another failure occurs next, data cannot be recorded in order to diagnose the failure. However, it is desirable to analyze information related to multiple failures in order to accurately determine the cause of the failure. In the conventional configuration, since information on only one failure is recorded, there is a problem that proper failure diagnosis cannot always be performed. This problem does not always solve even if the recording capacity is increased. Therefore, the conventional failure diagnosis device has a problem in that it is not possible to effectively collect information for failure diagnosis even if the recording capacity is increased, and thus it is not always possible to perform accurate failure diagnosis. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an operating state diagnosis device capable of efficiently collecting failure diagnosis information while suppressing the storage capacity. A further object of the present invention is to provide an operating state diagnosis device that has a simple configuration and can collect a plurality of pieces of failure diagnosis information at different timings without increasing the storage capacity.

[0005]

The present invention is configured as follows to achieve the above object. That is, the vehicle failure diagnosis apparatus of the present invention records information by means of information detecting means for detecting information relating to the driving state of the vehicle, recording means for recording the information in time series, and recording means. A plurality of recording locations provided for this purpose and a recording changing means for changing the recording location and recording the new recording location each time a failure is detected. In this case, when the hazard switch is operated to turn on the recording changing means and the vehicle speed is zero, the recording place is changed. In another aspect, the vehicle bonnet switch is operated.
The recording location is changed when it is turned on.
ing. According to another aspect of the present invention, a vehicle failure diagnosis method is provided. This method detects information related to the driving state of the vehicle, records the information in a predetermined recording location in a time series, and changes the recording location each time a failure is detected to a new recording location. Record.

In this case, when the bonnet switch or the hazard switch is operated to be turned on and the vehicle speed is zero, the recording location is changed.
That is, the condition that the hazard switch is turned on and the vehicle speed is zero functions as a trigger for changing the recording location.
And this trigger can be set variously. Further, if the trigger priorities are set in advance, recording can be performed in the descending order of the trigger priorities. in this case,
The information on the recording location recorded by the functioning of the trigger having the higher priority does not rewrite the recording location when the recording location is changed by the trigger having a priority lower than that of the trigger, and causes the recording. It is performed only when the recording location is requested to be changed by the operation of the trigger having a higher priority than the trigger and the recording location is the target of rewriting.

[0007]

According to the present invention, information relating to the driving state of the vehicle is detected, this information is recorded in a predetermined recording location in time series, and the recording location is changed every time a failure is detected. I try to record in a new recording place. By doing so, it is possible to record information before a plurality of failures occur. When analyzing one cause of failure, the state immediately before the failure is the most important, and it is often the case that even if necessary abnormal information is collected even before the failure, effective information is not always provided. The present invention is configured based on such experience, and is configured such that information other than necessary information before the occurrence of the failure can be erased and information related to another failure state can be recorded. As a result, the limited storage capacity can be effectively utilized for recording failure information. For example, when the driver operates the hazard switch, it is highly possible that the driver felt something abnormal while the vehicle was running.Therefore, the detection location of the hazard switch was changed as a condition, and the new location was changed. Make sure to write information to the area. However, if only the operation of the hazard switch is used as a condition, the failure state may not always be displayed. In consideration of this point, the recording location may be changed only when all the other conditions are satisfied by weighting other conditions. As an important matter,
Vehicle speed, engine speed, water temperature and other parameters can be considered.

In this case, for example, when the hazard switch is operated to be turned on and the vehicle speed is zero, the recording location is changed.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown an automobile 1 on which a failure diagnosis device according to an embodiment of the present invention can be mounted.
An automobile has an electronic control unit ECU that electronically controls the operation of the engine and the traveling of the vehicle. EC
U is connected to the engine E, and signals from various sensors are input to the ECU. A control signal for controlling engine ignition timing, fuel injection timing, fuel injection amount, etc. based on the input signal. Is output. The ECU has
For example, signals from an engine speed sensor, a water temperature sensor, an intake air amount, an O ₂ sensor, an accelerator opening sensor, an idle switch, an accessory operating switch, etc. are input. The vehicle of this example includes a drive recorder 3 which is connected to the ECU via an intermediate harness 6 and records information input to the ECU. The drive recorder 3 has
In addition to the signal input to the ECU, for example, an operation signal for the hazard switch 4 and a signal from the bonnet switch 8 for detecting whether or not the bonnet is opened are input. For this reason, as shown in FIG.
A connector 5 for connecting to U and a connector 7 connected to the hazard switch 4 and the like are provided. As shown in FIG. 3, the drive recorder 3 includes an input interface unit 9 that processes analog / digital inputs, a communication unit 10 that performs multiplex communication with an ECU, a power supply unit 11, and a case where the power supply unit 11 does not function. A backup unit 12 that performs a backup, a CPU 13 that performs processing such as necessary calculation for information from the ECU and stores the information, and an IC card 1 that writes the information stored in the CPU 13 when a failure occurs.
4 and. The IC card 14 is detachably attached to the drive recorder 3. Further, the CPU 13
It contains a RAM 15 for writing information and a ROM 16 in which predetermined information is stored in advance.

The drive recorder 3 of this example constantly communicates by a multiplex transmission system to collect specific information of the vehicle. When the user turns on the hazard switch 4 or the like when a failure or an accident occurs, or when other conditions are satisfied, the information stored in the CPU 13 is moved to the IC card 14 and held. Referring to FIG. 4, the content of control of the failure diagnosis apparatus of the present invention is shown in the form of a flow chart. This control is performed by executing a program provided in the built-in ROM 16 of the CPU 13 of the drive recorder 3. In the drive recorder program, first, information collection items are set (step S1). These information or data include vehicle speed V, engine speed ne, water temperature thw, charging efficiency ce, target speed FNE, air-fuel ratio correction coefficient CF.
B, the duty value TISC of the idle speed control valve (ISC valve), whether the idle switch is on,
Bit information BIT indicating whether or not the ignition switch is ON is included. The drive recorder 3 determines whether the ignition switch is on (step S
2) If it is on, the operation is started (step S
3). That is, writing is started in the RAM 15 built in the CPU 13. Then, it is determined whether or not the hazard switch 4 is turned on (step S4), and when the hazard switch 4 is turned on, the RAM 15 of the CPU 13 is determined.
The information of each bank written in is written in the IC card 14, and the information is held in the IC card 14 (step S5). A plurality of write banks (areas) are prepared in the RAM for writing to the IC card 14 (in this example, three banks B1, B2, B3 are prepared as shown in FIG. 5).

Then, it is judged whether there is any unwritten bank (step S6), and if there is an unused bank, another bank is prepared (step S7). When there is no writing bank, it is possible to stop writing to the IC card by displaying something. In addition, writing can be continued by overwriting the first bank. In this case, the capacity of the RAM 15 of the CPU 13 is at least larger than the capacity of one bank of the IC card 14.
Similar to the bank of the IC card, the RAM of the CPU uses up the recording area and uses the storage area to overwrite the recording area from the beginning. Therefore, if no failure occurs, the RAM area is repeatedly used. The amount of information that can be written in one bank is set so that the capacity of one bank covers the operation time of 2 to 3 minutes. In this state, when the ignition switch is turned off, the information is transferred to the IC card as shown in FIG. 6 and the information is held in the IC card. Therefore,
When a certain bank is called up and prepared for writing, if the ignition switch is turned off in the state where no failure occurs, the information immediately before the stop is written in a predetermined bank of the IC card.

In the above example, each time the hazard switch 4 is pressed, the information in the RAM 15 with the built-in CPU 14 is written in the bank in which the IC card 14 is located.
That is, the ON operation of the hazard switch 4 acts as a trigger for the write operation to the bank. This write trigger discloses only turning on the hazard switch 4 in the above example, but is not limited to this.
By providing a switch 8 which is turned on when the bonnet is opened and detecting the ON operation of the switch 8, the write trigger can be used. further,
Since it is not always necessary to operate the hazard switch 4 at the time of failure, when it is determined that valid information cannot be obtained only by this condition, the conditions that the hazard switch 4 is turned on and the vehicle speed is 0 are complete. Sometimes it can be configured to be a trigger. Further, for example, detection of abnormality of the rotation speed sensor, water temperature sensor, O ₂ sensor, etc. can be used as a trigger. Furthermore, if there is a bank in which the IC card 14 has not been written by setting the priority order to the triggers, the banks are sequentially changed and written regardless of which trigger is acted. After performing the above step, writing may be set only when a trigger having a higher priority than the trigger at the time of writing of the bank is actuated.

Hereinafter, it will be described that the malfunction of the air valve for adjusting the air amount in the idling state of the engine can be properly detected by using the present invention. As shown in FIG. 7, an engine E to which the present invention is applied includes a cylinder block 17 in which a cylinder bore 17 is formed, and a piston 18 slides in the cylinder bore 17, and a cylinder head 20 combined with an upper portion of the cylinder block 19.
And the upper part of the piston 18 of the cylinder bore 19 and the lower part of the cylinder head 20
Is formed. An intake passage 22 and an exhaust passage 23 communicate with the combustion chamber 21, and an intake valve 26 and an exhaust valve 27 are provided at the ports 24 and 25, respectively. A fuel injection valve 28 is provided near the intake port 24 of the intake passage 22, a surge tank 29 is provided further upstream thereof, a throttle valve 30 is provided further upstream thereof, and an intake air temperature sensor 31 is provided. A sensor 32 is provided.
An air cleaner 33 is provided at the most upstream side of the intake passage 22. In the intake system, there is provided a bypass passage 34 that bypasses the throttle valve 30 during idle operation and supplies air necessary for idle operation. The bypass passage 34 is provided with a bypass valve, that is, an air valve 35. Furthermore, a water jacket 36 for cooling the engine E is provided, and the water jacket 36 includes
A water temperature sensor 37 is provided. Further, a distributor 38 for providing an ignition voltage is provided. Then, signals from these sensors and the like are introduced into the ECU. The ECU
A control signal corresponding to the operating state is output to the fuel injection valve 28, the air valve 35, and the like. The cooling water is passed through the air valve so that the cooling water is sensitive to the cooling water.

Further, in the apparatus of this embodiment, the air
In addition to the valve 35, an idle speed control valve (ISC valve) 39 that is provided in parallel with the valve 35 and electrically controls the air amount during idle operation is provided. Therefore, the ISC valve 39 and the air valve 35 are common in that they control the amount of air during idle operation, but the ISC valve 39 controls the valve opening by electrically duty-controlling the solenoid valve. However, the difference is that the air valve 35 is a mechanical valve whose opening changes in response to the water temperature. As described above, the air valve 35 serves to secure intake air by bypassing the throttle valve 30 in order to secure the amount of air during idling. It is set to become larger, and the opening becomes smaller at a specific water temperature or higher. The air valve 35 has a screw for adjustment, but if the screw is operated for some reason, idle rotation control may not be properly performed. That is, even if the water temperature rises above a specific value, the engine speed may not drop. However, this problem disappears when the water temperature rises sufficiently. However, such a failure of the air valve 35 cannot be easily reproduced by the dealer, and the cause cannot be investigated in many cases.

However, when the drive recorder 3 according to the present invention is used, since the information of the engine E is widely recorded, it is possible to accurately find the cause by examining the recorded contents. The information items recorded in the drive recorder 3 and held in the IC card 14 when the hazard switch 4 is pressed are as follows. Engine speed: ne Water temperature sensor output: thw Filling efficiency: ce Target speed: FNE Air-fuel ratio correction coefficient: CFB ISC valve: DUTY value, TISC bit information: Idle switch BIT As shown in FIG. Are transmitted by multiplex transmission signals. Therefore, although the sampling times are different, they are stored as serial data at different addresses in recording. However, these sets of information are treated as being of the same time.

It is assumed that the analysis result of the above information at a certain time is as follows. Engine speed = 1300 rpm (too high for idle operation) Water temperature = 80 ° C (temperature to be controlled to idle speed) ISC valve = Energizing in the closing direction (because the rotation speed is high, it operates in the decreasing direction) Intake amount = Large (High for idle operation) Idle SW = ON (indicates that it is in idle operation) Target speed = 645 rpm (Auxiliary equipment such as air conditioner is not operating) When this information is analyzed, in the above operating status , It turns out that the proper rotation is not obtained even though the idle operation is performed. Therefore, it is found that the operation of the ISC valve 39 or the air valve 35 is abnormal.
Then, when a trigger is actuated when a further time has elapsed and recording is performed in another bank of the IC card 14, if the same analysis result is obtained, the ISC valve 39 is operating normally, and , It is found that the air valve 34 is abnormal.

Therefore, when triggers of a plurality of failure states act, failure information can be more accurately diagnosed by recording the information incidental to each situation.

[0018]

According to the present invention, by providing a plurality of writing areas, it is possible to secure more effective diagnostic information without increasing the storage capacity as described above, and thereby more accurate information can be secured. It is possible to diagnose a car failure. Furthermore, setting the priority of the write trigger enables more accurate diagnosis in which more effective information can be collected for different situations.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view of an automobile equipped with a failure diagnosis device according to an embodiment of the present invention,

FIG. 2 is an external view of a drive recorder,

FIG. 3 is an internal configuration diagram of a drive recorder,

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of control of the failure diagnosis device,

FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram of a plurality of banks for writing information,

6 is a flowchart of a routine executed by interrupting the flowchart of FIG.

FIG. 7 is a schematic configuration cross-sectional view of an engine capable of performing engine idle rotation control.

FIG. 8 is a conceptual diagram showing a state in which information is written in an IC card by multiplex transmission.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 automobile, 3 drive recorder, 4 hazard switch, 13 CPU, 14 IC card, 15 RA
M, 16 ROM, 35 air valve, 39ISC valve.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── --- Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-63-221228 (JP, A) JP-A-4-292545 (JP, A) JP-A-4-260841 (JP, A) JP-A-3- 231048 (JP, A) JP 62-3313 (JP, A) JP 62-1651 (JP, A) JP 60-98153 (JP, A) JP 58-71237 (JP, A) JP 55-144702 (JP, A) Actual development 63-23664 (JP, U) Actual flat 4-75736 (JP, U) Actual 57-124446 (JP, U) (58) Fields investigated (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) B60R 16/02 F02B 77/08 F02D 45/00 345 F02D 45/00 376 G01M 17/00

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] 1. An information detecting means for detecting information related to a driving state of a vehicle, a recording means for recording the information in time series, and a plurality of recording means for recording the information by the recording means. A vehicle having a recording location and a recording changing means for changing the recording location and recording the new recording location each time a failure is detected.
A failure diagnosis device, wherein the record changing means is a hazard switch.
Switch is turned on and the vehicle speed is zero.
A vehicle failure diagnosis device characterized by changing the recording location . 2. Detecting information related to the driving state of a vehicle
Information detecting means, a recording means for recording the information in time series, and a recording means for recording the information.
Multiple recording locations, and changing the recording location each time a failure is detected.
A vehicle equipped with record changing means for recording in a different recording place
A failure diagnosis device, wherein the vehicle bonnet switch is
Changing the recording location when it is turned on by being operated
A vehicle failure diagnosis device. 3. A new recording location by detecting information relating to a driving state of a vehicle, recording the information in a predetermined recording location in a time series, and changing the recording location each time a failure is detected. a fault diagnosis method for a vehicle to be recorded, the c
The Sud switch is operated to turn it on, and the vehicle speed
When it is b, the recording location is changed.
Vehicle failure diagnosis method . 4. Detecting information related to the driving state of a vehicle
And, the information chronologically recorded in a predetermined recording location, the new change the recording location each time of detecting a failure
A method of diagnosing a vehicle failure that is recorded in a different recording location.
When the bonnet switch of the vehicle is operated and turned on
A method for diagnosing a vehicle failure , characterized in that the recording location is changed .