Education with Virtual Technologies
Virtual teaching
The problem with many of the hydraulics courses is the difficulty of displaying the structure, motion and functions of hydraulic components so that they are easily understandable for students. Problems occur especially on visualizing altering pressure, fluid flow in orifices, sliding couples or parts moving compared to each other. Using two dimensional pictures is easy for teachers; pictures are quite easily available from partners in hydraulic industry so that they don't have to be drawn from scratch. Also some animations and videos are available, but they are rare and don't show all the components or functions desired. Using those methods students have been able to understand hydraulics - eventually.
To be able to give students profound knowledge about hydraulics more quickly and thoroughly, one needs to be able to display hydraulic components like in real life, but with more functionalities. It is not enough that they can be seen in three dimensions. They must also be presented interactively in such a way, that students can turn and roll the object and look at which ever detail they want from which ever angle or view. And then the students must be able to disassemble the objects piece by piece to see the assembly structure and to even go inside an object to see its functions in action. Also the component structure must be viewable in slices from various directions. At the moment the advantages of these possibilities are utilized in teaching water hydraulics at IHA.
Contact:
Professor Kari T. Koskinen
kari.t.koskinen@tut.fi
Virtual machine laboratory
Today the machine systems are more versatile and sophisticated which make those systems very challenging to understand, plan and maintain. Mechanics, hydraulics, electronics and automation are closely connected to each other. However, the understanding of the whole system is extremely important for system planners, service technicians and supervisors of the machine. Because of that, the new approaches and methods of competence development and education of complex systems have to develop.
M1-technology to build virtual machine laboratory is developed in TUT with Smart Simulators research group. Main components of the M1-technology are real-time simulation model, dynamic diagrams, meters and gauges, chain of operations, recorder, control panel of the machine, and wiki. Harvester with parallel boom is used as a prototype of the virtual machine laboratory application. Basic view of the virtual machine laboratory of the harvester prototype is shown in next figure.
View of the M1-prototype with harvester
Figure shows that 3D view and diagram view are showed. With these views it is easy to see how the machine or boom moves and what that means in hydraulic diagram. It is possible to take views which are needed to study desired problem.
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Transparency view of the control valve |
Measurements in dynamic diagram |
Efficiency has been improved by splitting dynamic simulation in two simulation models, hydrostatic driving transmission and working hydraulics. Simulation also has features like CAN-simulation and environmental variables like temperature. Simulation model of the virtual machine runs in the same computer as the whole virtual machine laboratory.
Contact:
Professor Kari T. Koskinen
kari.t.koskinen@tut.fi