Simulation and Experiment Assisted Electronics Education in Electrical Engineering: A Case Study of an Experiment

Using simulation tools for education has many advantages, especially in a traditionally classroom-taught engineering field like power electronics. One of the fundamental topics is the speed control of DC motors. The flexible control of DC motors has resulted in the industry's extensive use of DC motors, in sync with the increasing usage of semiconductor power converter units. A simulation and laboratory-based DC motor control are introduced in this work. This proposed system consists of a microcontroller and a potentiometer connected to the A0 pin to change the firing angle of the circuit through Arduino. This technique involves managing a DC motor's speed by employing Arduino to send gate pulses to a TRIAC. The TRIAC then interrupts the voltage pulse before the triggering pulse emerges at its gate terminal. It allows the section of the AC voltage wave following the triggering pulse at the TRIAC's gate terminal to power the load, thus controlling the motor's speed. In this way, we can get control over the terminal voltage of the motor, and therefore, we get control over the speed of the DC motor. This paper presents the proposed method's simulation and experimental realization. The proposed method is suitable for implementation in educational laboratories and can be used remotely by the students once installed. The components involved have low cost and high availability and can be further upgraded.