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The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering believes in engineering education that combines both theory and practice. As a result, we are very laboratory intensive. The department is committed to providing the students with laboratories equipped with the state-of-the art equipment in mechanical and industrial engineering tools and techniques. Virtually every course offered by the department includes laboratory experiments and design projects to enable the students to obtain hands on experience and as a mean to verify classroom theoretical development. As a result the teaching laboratories available in the department are fully equipped and judged to be comprehensive and of high quality. These include the Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer & Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, Thermodynamics, Properties of Materials, CIM, Ergonomics, Metrology, Mechanical Systems, Desalination, Solid Mechanics, Fatigue and Vibration, and Automatic Control laboratories. The labs have both natural and fluorescent lighting and fully air-conditioned. Essential tools and equipment are available in the laboratory area such as compressed air, steam, fumes cub-boards, white boards, water supply and drainage system and heaters in addition to distilled water production device.
In recent years, the department has invested significant amount of resources into developing, maintaining, and upgrading its laboratories aimed at providing the students with hands-on experience that would prepare them for seamless entry into the workforce upon graduation. In addition to outright new equipment purchases, our laboratory development effort has been greatly aided by the acquisition of several units of industrial grade equipment.
A new building for the College of Engineering is under construction that will be completed by the end of 2005. The space is allocated to the MIE Department for different labs that will improve the overall space problem. Several laboratories including CIM, Ergonomics, Computer, and Research will be built in the near future for MIE Department.
Fluid Mechanics Lab
The Fluid Mechanics Lab performs experiments related to fluid properties, calibrations of gages, and flow meters, measurement of head losses in piping and valves and friction factors in fluid flow systems, pump head and efficiency, fluid cavitation phenomena, rotational vortex motion, and lift-drag for airfoils and typical bodies. The design projects also are conducted in the lab.
Mostly for undergraduate experimental work, this laboratory provides facilities for on-line data acquisition, processing and control. The demonstration modules include a variety of experimental rigs for the demonstration and practical testing of both continuous and discrete-time theory. These include a number of DC motor sets, Ball & Hoop apparatus, dual water tanks, coupled drive systems, inverted pendulum, and additional balancing processes such as the ball and beam, and ball and plate. A number of process control units that include, temperature, pressure, level and flow control are available in the lab. The laboratory is equipped with a number of data acquisition stations, oscilloscopes, and power supply units.
Students are introduced to fundamentals of thermodynamics experiments, by using modern and different instrumentations for measuring common thermodynamics engineering phenomena, like pressure, temperature. The lab places special emphasis on developing experimental investigations and conducting experiments with written and oral communication of experimental findings. The facilities available in the labs include refrigeration and air conditioning systems, film condensation, heat exchangers, Steam power plant, internal combustion engine, energy balances and exhaust gas analysis system including catalytic converter operation, error analysis and experimental statistics.
This laboratory supports instructions on topics related to material properties. Through the use of the laboratory, students are expected to develop an appreciation in understanding material performance and to relate internal structure with mechanical properties of material that is very important to all material applications. Facilities include metallographic preparation of specimens, etching room, injection moulding unit, hardness tester, heat treating furnaces, tensile testing equipment, and welding equipment.
This laboratory has basic facilities to conduct projects on condition monitoring and vibration testing. The equipment and accessories include real time analyzers, accelerometers, acoustic emission sensors, on line data acquisition and signal processing modules.
Solid Mechanics Laboratory
Solid Mechanics laboratory can be used for conducting basic mechanical tests i.e., tensile, compressive, bending, torsion, fatigue, creep and impact tests.
The mission of the Workshop is to provide students with an understanding of machining processes. This mission has two aspects: first is for students to have hands-on experience in machining to better understand the capabilities and limitations of the various processes and second, the laboratory allows students to collect data on the processes to assist them in comprehending the science of the processes.
There are two workshops in the Department. Students learn basic machine shop practices: part layout, process planning, milling, drilling, turning, thread formation, tool selection, grinding, measurement, use of hand tools, welding and cutting processes. Other topics covered are drawing layout, dimensioning, and other pertinent issues. As they continue on with higher-level coursework, the workshops provide additional hands-on educational experiences. Access to the shop and tools create opportunities for students to engage in challenging activities and projects in engineering.
The CIM Lab presents the coupling between manufacturing simulations and production control and emphasizes the basis of the parallel and distributed processing techniques. The Lab consists of a production line that includes: two CNC machines, two robots, an assembly station, a material handling system, an automated guided vehicle (AGV) and an automatic storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) that represent an entire factory environment. An SCADA system coordinates the different workstations as well as the flow of material. The lab supports CIM and CAD/CAM courses.
The ergonomics lab is designed for the study of human work where the students can systematically investigate factors that effect human performance and occupational health and safety. The laboratory is equipped with strength measuring equipment, anthropometer, ergometer, treadmill and heart and blood pressure measuring equipment, and environment measuring devices. and. Students learn to assess workload, design workplace and evaluate environment. The Ergonomics Lab is used both for lab exercises and research and it is providing with internet access, computing capabilities and Ergomass and Mannequin software packages.
The mission of the Metrology Lab is to provide students with an active learning environment for the measurement technologies used in manufacturing. This facility is used in classes on manufacturing processes. Students use the laboratory to collect and analyze measurement data, evaluate measurement methodologies, and learn the limitations and capabilities of measurement technologies. The laboratory also provides students with the opportunity to learn how measurement methods are developed.
Computer Aided Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Laboratory (CAMIE)
In addition to the basic laboratories and workshop facilities described above the department has a good computing and information infrastructure. The MIE Department has one computer lab named as CAMIE Lab which houses 40 PC’s. The lab is also equipped with software packages such as Microsoft office, MATLAB, AutoCAD, Arena, Fortran 95 Compiler, Phoenics and CFX computational fluid dynamics and Algor FEA. The department is also getting support from Computer Center (CC) through two full time computer specialists stationed in the College of Engineering in addition to direct support from the CET.
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