A Hybrid Simulation and Hands-On Experimentation for Electric Machines Laboratory

In this paper, we presented a hybrid approach to integrate hands-on experimentation with virtual simulation environment in an Electric Machines course. This was achieved by using Lab-Volt’s LVSIM-EMS software as a platform for the virtual simulation environment. The use of this simulation software allowed students to freely experiment and test various circuit designs before they actually conduct any physical experimentations. This hybrid approach helped promote lab safety and also avoid damaging the equipment due to random testing. In addition, it allowed for more student-centric experiments with less hazardous lab environment. A new experiment to derive the equivalent-circuits of a transformer was developed to implement and assess this new approach. We qualitatively assessed the impact of this laboratory setup using a survey questionnaire. Furthermore, pre and post assessments were used to quantitatively assess the impact of this hybrid approach. Results indicated that using this virtual simulation environment coupled with physical experimentation increased the students’ level of understanding of topics taught and also reduced equipment damage and maintenance cost. This conclusion was inferred as a result of our statistical analysis conducted for both cases.