LabVIEW-Based Automatic Control Systems Laboratory Using Local and Remote Experimentation Approaches

A one unit, three-hour automatic control systems laboratory course was modified to incorporate LabVIEW-based student-developed controls projects. After learning LabVIEW during the first three weeks of the course, each student was required to develop and perform three PC-based data acquisition and control experiments. The final experiment involved the development of a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) wind velocity control system for a small subsonic wind tunnel. In addition to the course, students and researchers can access the wind tunnel speed control system via the Internet to investigate the effects of different gain settings on the PID wind tunnel control system