(242)INTEGRATION OF VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION IN A MODERNMECHANICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM

摘要

One of the key objectives of the Petroleum Institute (PI) is to educate future engineers forthe local oil and gas industry. As a result, the mechanical engineering program at the PIhas developed various hands-on laboratory courses that provide students with theopportunity to solve real-life problems in an academic laboratory setting before assumingtheir engineering roles in the oil field.While traditional hardware instrumentation has been and continues to play a major role inlaboratory measurement, Virtual Instrumentation relies on computer software and existingcomputer hardware to complement such measurements techniques in a reliable and lesscostly manner.Given the increasing importance of Virtual Instrumentation in various fields of science andengineering, throughout various laboratory courses, students at the PI develop hands onskills with LabVIEW?, a powerful software tool to develop Virtual Instruments. Ofconsiderable importance is the student’s ability to develop complex Virtual Instrumentswith limited prior programming skills. Throughout this paper the development andimportance of Virtual Instrumentation will be outlined in addition to how it has beenintegrated within the mechanical engineering curriculum at the PI.