Design of a virtual laboratory environment for a water bath temperature control system

Abstract

In technical education, laboratory components comprise as an essential part, without it engineering education remains incomplete. Experiments conducted on laboratory equipments lend a practical touch to the theoretical knowledge acquired by the students. However, setting up a specialized laboratory consisting of sophisticated and expensive equipments is an unaffordable for many universities and engineering colleges. Therefore, by developing virtual experiments, sharing of specific and expensive equipment among institution is made much easier, as it can be used from any place with secure and controlled access. In this project, the system is developed using LABVIEW 8.6. This project consists of three stages. The first stage is hardware development, which involves construction of interface circuit to allow communication between plant and computer. The second stage is to build the Fuzzy Logic Controller using LABVIEW software, where fuzzy set and rulebase are applied. The final stage is to publish the GUI module onto the web for real-time remote control.