WEMPEC lab renovated to enhance student learning
eated at a computer in the teaching laboratory
of the Wisconsin
Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC), a student
launches a software program and enters a voltage value when prompted.
Several feet away, a motor drive attached to a lab bench blinks on and
the motor it controls whirs to life. The student watches as lines representing
the motor’s speed and current inch diagonally upward across the
computer screen and then level off. When they do, he sends data from
the test to a spreadsheet, and enters another voltage to begin the process
again.
Fully automated experiments like this one are now
possible thanks to a major new upgrade of the Grainger Electric Machines
and Power Electronics Laboratory—the official name of WEMPEC’s
teaching space. When the renovation is complete, five work-stations
will each sport seven different types of motors. And students will be
able to operate each motor using any one of a set of state-of-the-art,
commercial motor drives.
Most importantly, the entire array of technologies
will be connected through a sophisticated software program and computer
interface, allowing students to run computer-controlled experiments,
quickly compare data from tests involving different motors and drive
control methods, and overlay theoretical and experimental results.
“This lab will have an unprecedented level of
both integration and automation, which means we can do a lot of experiments
we could only dream of before,” says Consolidated Papers Professor
of Controls Engineering Robert
Lorenz, who co-directs WEMPEC with Grainger Professor of Power Electronics
and Electrical Machines Thomas
Lipo. “Automation also gives students more time to think,
and faculty and teaching assistants the time and sophisticated approaches
needed to teach in depth. Undergraduates using this laboratory will
gain a much more thorough understanding than they would otherwise.”
Each year, more than 200 undergraduates carry out
experiments in the Grainger Laboratory for their courses in electrical
machines, power conversion, and power electronics. Often they do lab
work right after a lecture period, says Lorenz, giving them an immediate
sense of the applications and limits of the theoretical concepts presented
in class. The facility also supports graduate-level classes and three-week
short-courses for people in industry.
Most of the lab renovation was funded by UW-Madison
ECE alumnus David Grainger and the Grainger Foundation. The two-and-a-half-year
project included the development of the laboratory’s conceptual
design in collaboration with a WEMPEC colleague at the University of
Rome. This summer and fall, industry engineer Randy Gascoigne and master’s
students Shreesha Adiga and Korwin Anderson have been busily installing
and integrating the laboratory’s hardware and software.
In addition, Rockwell Automation and other leading
companies, including ABB, Inc., Danfoss and Yaskawa Electric America,
donated the latest in commercial motor drives and machines. The gifts,
says Co-Director Lipo, provide students with “tools that are at
work in the marketplace now.”
“We know that our ability to offer students
a deep immersion in both theory and lab work prepares them for leading
engineering jobs in industry,” adds Lorenz. “So, having
little-to-no distance between this school and the workplace is of paramount
importance.”
One class this fall is already using the new equipment.
When the facility is fully operational in the spring, a full complement
of courses will be taught there. Even then, the laboratory’s evolution
into what Lorenz calls a “teaching studio” won’t be
quite complete. The next phase will involve the integration of numerical
tools, such as finite element analysis, with experimental data generated
by the equipment, so that students can see the relationship between
the two.
“This is a collaboration to educate people in
our field,” says Jon Simons, Technology Director for Rockwell
Automation's Standard Drives group. “We view it as our responsibility
to help teach the engineers who will eventually come to work in our
industry. And it’s important for the students to have access to
the latest, state-of-the-art equipment. It enhances the experience.”
True to WEMPEC’s mission, the educational project
has taken place in the full spirit of cooperation between the university
and industry.
