| 摘要 |
A first exhaust gas sensor 5 (air-fuel ratio sensor) and a second exhaust gas sensor 6 (O2 sensor) are disposed respectively upstream and downstream of a catalytic converter. An exhaust system E which ranges from the exhaust gas sensor 5 to the exhaust gas sensor 6 and includes the catalytic converter 3 is regarded as an object exhaust system E, and a behavior of the object exhaust system E is modeled. When an internal combustion engine 1 is in operation, parameters to be set of the model of the object exhaust system E are sequentially identified based on the data of outputs of the exhaust gas sensors 5, 6. A deteriorated state of the catalytic converter 3 is determined based on the data of the identified values. Concurrent with the determination of the deteriorated state, a target air-fuel ratio for the internal combustion engine 1 is sequentially determined in order to converge the output of the exhaust gas sensor 5 to a given target value, and the air-fuel ratio of the internal combustion engine 1 is controlled to converge the output (the detected value of the air-fuel ratio) of the first exhaust gas sensor 5 to the target air-fuel ratio, for thereby allowing the catalytic converter 3 to achieve an optimum purifying capability. In this manner, the deteriorated state of the catalytic converter 3 can be determined in various operation states of the internal combustion engine 1 while keeping the purifying capability of the catalytic converter 3.
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