Abstract:

Remote laboratories are trending in some technical areas, as electronics, but it is something quite rare in the thermal engineering field. An example on this side is some heat exchangers that can be visualized on-line, as the one of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

For the scenario of the Escuela Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, we are placed in the middle of Madrid, where the space is reduced and very expensive. At the same time, we have between 500 and 800 students in topics as Thermodynamics and Heat transfer, and little less in others topics as Thermal Engineering or Industrial Heat and Cold production, so, the practical learning management in this situation is quite complicated: split students in small groups, manage a huge number of lab groups, manage the big amount of group changes that students will request, and look for availability of enough human resources to manage that situation.

Anyway, thermal systems learning needs a practical learning to enforce knowledge, and our solution is the adaptation of our laboratories to be capable to provide ‘in-situ’ and ‘on-line’ activities. I.e. ‘in-situ’ for possible small groups as master or PhD students and ‘on-line’ for massive groups.

This work describes the adaptation for the thermal engineering laboratory that can give practical activities to 12 in-situ students at the same time to be capable of provide on-line services to all the considered students with a combination of moodle, LabView® and the required laboratory hardware taking into account safety measures. Safety measures must take into account the ‘in-situ’ activities development (traditional lab-work) and the ‘on-line’ ones that goes from what can be controlled ‘on-line’ to anti-hackers safety measures.

Keywords:

Thermal engineering, e-learning.