Engine Management System | Engine Control Unit

Explanation
  An Engine Management System is now very common or even required on both high end and regular vehicles. Its also common for people to use the term Engine Control Unit (ECU) in place of engine management system.
  The engine management system is basically an electronic control unit (ECU) which receives signals from various sensors, make calculations and sends output signals to carry out various functions and operations within and around the engine.
  The main reason for a proper engine management system is to reduce emissions and achieve better fuel economy. Performance is also increased but vehicles before management systems used to perform well for their time but an engine management system achieves the performance figures with better fuel economy and less emissions.
  The benefits of an engine management system will be the same as the benefits of a fuel injected engine as fuel injection is controlled by an engine management system but there are some other benefits when a sophisticated and powerful system is used.
  Some of the other benefits of an engine control unit is that it can alter certain operations in the same engine to produce a different result.
  For example an automotive marque can have the same 5.0 liter engine in two seperate models but the ECU on both engines can be tuned differently to allow one of the engines to have a smooth luxury feel and the other to have a sporty character.
  More advanced uses of an engine control unit can facilitate both the comfort and sporty characters of the engine in a single vehicle and usually combines with other features which allows the vehicle to have driving modes.
  Some of the common sensors which sends information to the engine management system are the crankshaft position sensor, camshaft position sensor, mass airflow sensor, air temperature, coolant temperature, throttle position, knock sensor, oxygen sensors and many others.
  Some of the common places where the engine management system sends instructions and information to will be the electronic injectors, spark plugs, ignition coils, cooling fans, engine immobiliser and displays such as but not limited to the tachometer and the temperature guage.
  All of these sensors that send information and all of the areas where the ECU sends commands to adds up to alot. The processor of an engine management system usually has to perform thousands of operations every second but the management systems are built to handle more operations than the engine will give it.
  In fact the engine management system in the 2012 Lamborghini Aventador is capable of performing up to 500 million operations per second which should be more than sufficient for the operations of the engine and possibly other areas of the car.
 
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