INTEGRATION OF VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION IN A MODERN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULUM

One of the key objectives of the Petroleum Institute (PI) is to educate future engineers for the local oil and gas industry. As a result, the mechanical engineering program at the PI has developed various hands-on laboratory courses that provide students with the opportunity to solve real-life problems in an academic laboratory setting before assuming their engineering roles in the oil field. While traditional hardware instrumentation has been and continues to play a major role in laboratory measurement, Virtual Instrumentation relies on computer software and existing computer hardware to complement such measurements techniques in a reliable and less costly manner. Given the increasing importance of Virtual Instrumentation in various fields of science and engineering, throughout various laboratory courses, students at the PI develop hands on skills with LabVIEW (TM), a powerful software tool to develop Virtual Instruments. Of considerable importance is the student's ability to develop complex Virtual Instruments with limited prior programming skills. Throughout this paper the development and importance of Virtual Instrumentation will be outlined in addition to how it has been integrated within the mechanical engineering curriculum at the PI.