The Application of a Computer-Aided Data Acquisition System (NI ELVIS) during Physical Experimentation in an Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Program

In order to increase student interest and the student’s own creative, hands-on, problem solving skills, a unique and innovative approach has been implemented that creates an opportunity to push students to use their creative limits. Through the instructional use of design, unique experiments, and open-ended projects that formulate and investigate realistic, inventive and complex problems students received more closely aligned classroom topic with industrial standards. This paper reports the results of the development and implementation of hands-on laboratory experiments in a newly developed laboratory for a two-semester undergraduate course in Instrumentation and Measurements in Mechanical Engineering. The course, designed for the undergraduate junior level, was a two-semester course for a total of four credits, and it took place in conjunction with a one-hour classroom lecture in mechanical engineering. A modified version of this approach, however, can easily be used at all levels of the mechanical engineering curriculum. Also, a very important part is a two-semester long, open-ended project (OEP) utilized a process which required the students to come up with creative approaches to problem solving. A full-cycle learning experience took place. After acquired necessary minimum knowledge, the students began their OEP with the development of an initial idea, continued on through the design and construction of a working prototype (including both system and measurement sensors on prototyping boards in ELVIS), and concluded by conducting a feasibility study, which involved writing a report, and giving a presentation. Because the ELVIS system is used mostly in many instructional electrical engineering laboratories, an extensive process of adaptation to mechanical engineering needs was implemented and the development of completely new experiments involving newly designed hardware and instructions had been developed and built in-house with student participation. in the areas of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), fluid dynamics of complex heterogeneous mixtures (multiphase, slurries, etc.), tribology, micro heat exchangers with phase transition, computer-aided measurement systems and instrumentation, electromagnetic sensors, turbulence and flow pattern phenomena in mixtures, deterministic and random signal analysis, and data processing and validation. His work has been published in more than one hundred refereed technical journals, conference publications, books, and monographs, and he has been granted more than 20 patents.