Next Generation “Living” Laboratory for Engineering Education and Engagement

Next Generation “Living” Laboratory for Engineering Education and Engagement

CONTEXT
In a recent report of the AECD’s Engineering Futures 2035 project, it is recommended that universities review and revise professional engineering education programs to embed a stronger focus on student engagement with contemporary engineering practice through greater use of practice-based pedagogies, project-based learning, and multi-disciplinary projects. The last decade has seen an encouraging trend in the development of “living” laboratories in Australian universities providing much-needed opportunities for engineering students across various disciplines to practice with instrumentation, data acquisition and data analytics in a real-world context. Most successful living labs in Australian and international universities have, however, been limited to high-rise and mid-rise building applications in urban areas. Many universities have engineering facilities outside of cities which highlights a need for living lab solutions for the low-rise building setting.

PURPOSE
This paper discusses the design and development of a novel living lab as an innovative tool for modern engineering education and engagement at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). The focus of this work is to enable effective living labs in low-rise buildings through suitable structural monitoring strategies.

APPROACH
The centre of the developed living lab is an embedded Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system designed to record structural responses of the lab building in a real-time and continuous basis. The lab testbed was intentionally designed such that drop ceilings are omitted to help students visualise and understand the arrangement of structural components and how sensors are placed strategically. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first-ever living lab system where all the monitored structures and SHM system components are in the line of sight of the lab users. The system can function on a 24/7 basis using ambient excitation as the main excitation source in conjunction with a simple artificial excitation when needed. Geometrically truncated models of the monitored structures are developed to provide students and visitors an opportunity to correlate between experimental and theoretical/numerical analysis results.

OUTCOMES
Since completion in 2021, the living lab system provides students and visitors a unique opportunity to practice various exercises from instrumentation set-up to data acquisition, data processing, and structural performance evaluation. A live web interface is being developed to allow the users to interact with the equipment systems in capturing the structural responses. A cloud-based data storage system has been developed and deployed to store measured data and allow students, especially those who choose to study online, to perform post-processing of data and structural condition assessment. The subsequent modal analysis proved that the system can correctly identify important vibration characteristics of the building under ambient and artificial excitations, providing them with a deeper understanding in the dynamics of the structures.

CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY
The paper concludes that the living lab system developed at UniSQ Springfield has been tested and proven to provide an effective tool for catering modern engineering education needs and advanced engineering skills.

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