للكاتبين
A. A. Boraey, G. A. Ghoneim, A. Helmy, A.M. Negm and T.M. Owais
Dept. of Water & Water Structures Eng., Faculty of Engineering,
Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt, EAbstract
Experimental work for undergraduate students is an essential part of their study of
engineering science especially fluid mechanics and hydraulics studies. The experimental
work of fluid mechanics and hydraulics provides a tool for clear understanding of different
phenomena as it expresses these phenomena in a visual manner. Due to many reasons,
experimental work for engineering students in the field of fluid mechanics and hydraulics is
not available or cannot be performed in the desired manner. These reasons are: (i) the
increasing numbers of students, (ii) the lack of staff members specially those familiar with
experimental work, (iii) the weak capabilities of laboratories and lack of financial aids, which
make these laboratories inadequate for the required tasks, and (iv) the number of experiments
to be studied by each student requires a method of education with less time requirements.
With the widespread of personal computers and computer laboratories accompanied by the
advances in computer science and related topics such as Artificial Intelligence and Expert
systems, it is believed to be a good tool for improving the educational process in field of
experimental hydraulics for engineering students. It is recognized that the education in
modern societies must undergo major transition in order to be in touch with the technological
developments of the 21st century . The objectives of this paper may be stated as follows: (i)
surveying of the facilities avalilable in the Zagazig University Hydraulics Laboratory
(ZUHL) and evaluating them with a proposed solution of the existing problems to improve its
performance, (ii) developing an educational software (using visuabl Basic 6.0) which helps
enhancing the outcome of the undergraduate students of civil engineering in the field of
experimental hydraulics, with the ability of the software (a) to evaluate the understanding of
the undergraduate students to experimental work. (b) to provide a database for the apparatus
and the associated experiments in ZUHL.
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