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Virtual Laboratory for Study of the Electric Machines Parameters and Characteristics Abstract

Computing and communication technology have had a significant impact on engineering education. This technology has significantly improved online, distance, collaborative learning, as well as the use of the virtual experiments and simulations in engineering education. One of the distinguishing features of engineering education is that the laboratory work is an integral part and its purpose is bringing the students closer to real situations that they may encounter. Advances in electric machinery, control, and instrumentation systems and interfaces call for a continuous upgrading of facilities that will support energy conversion education. Costs to equip an energy conversion laboratory for teaching undergraduates could easily run to a hundred thousand dollars. These prohibitive costs have forced many electrical engineering programs to trade off good quality laboratory equipment for affordable and significantly less accurate scaled-down models, thus, usually exhibiting characteristics that are far from what is considered typical. Moreover, the typical traditional electric machines laboratories offer very limited access to equipment and instrumentation. The shortcomings of traditional laboratories include among others: cost, safety, limited students’ access and space requirements. In this context virtual laboratories and experiments have become an appealing alternative to the traditional settings. Three key problems are discussed here: the purpose, the content and the impact of such a laboratory in studying and learning electrical machines.

I. Introduction

Engineering education can reach the desired level if practical and laboratory works are taught together with theory. Laboratories are common elements of training for the students in order to gain experience and to acquire knowledge required in present day industry. Practical experiments in a laboratory helps students gain practical skills, become familiar with the instrumentation and measurement systems, and prepare for professional life. The conventional way of providing practical experience to engineering students is through the use of extensive laboratory-based systems. Such systems require an actual hardware setup and a set of laboratory measurement systems and instrumentation that are often very costly to build or upgrade, and difficult to maintain. For safety and security reasons, access to laboratory- base systems is usually limited to a certain time and can only be given in the presence of a local facilitator. However, as education and technology merge the opportunities for teaching and learning have expanded at the very rapid rate of change in the field of technology poses special problems for academic institutions. There is a continual need to update and augment the content of courses and laboratories to keep pace with this change, especially in the area of engineering education. The central problem still remains the same; providing for students meaningful and relevant practical experiences while being limited by very finite resources in the provision of laboratory infrastructure. One solution to this problem is to use computers with suitable front-end design to simulate experiments. Furthermore, information and experience sharing are becoming increasingly critical to educational institutions mainly driven by the advancements in computer technology and the Internet.

Electromechanical energy conversion is a required course usually at junior level in most of the electrical engineering programs. This course typically consists of classroom and

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Belu, R. (2010, June), Virtual Laboratory For Study Of The Electric Machines Parameters And Characteristics Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--15897