While BITS spends an enormous amount of resources in ensuring cutting edge facilities are present on campus, outside a select few working in specialised fields, the student body remains unaware of what the institute has to offer. Through a series of articles, the English Press Club attempts to showcase the technology and equipment available to students. In this article we cover the Electrical, Electronic, and Instrumentation labs.
Electrical Machines (EMaC) Lab
Room 2119 in FD-II houses the EMaC Lab. The original lab was founded along with the institute in 1964, and an extension was inaugurated in November last year. The lab caters to students in the Electrical Machines course (an EEE/ENI core course) and some research scholars working in the same field.
The new extension was built off the generous contributions of Mr. Kishore Kumar Gupta, an alumnus from the 1970 batch. The lab cost 97.5 lakh to build and features five workstations equipped with machines from Leybold, a Swedish company based in Germany. The machines boast modular load coupling and decoupling. Hence all experiments pertaining to a type of motor can be performed on a single bench by connecting the corresponding load machine. Different workstations have different motors – DC, synchronous, and induction (both single phase and three phase) motors. Each workstation comes with a computer running the Virtual Instrumentation software to enable easy and paperless readings. The workstations are also equipped with insulated wire tips and vinyl flooring as safety measures.
The lab also features a DeLorenzo OpenLab machine, for students to better understand the internal structure and functioning of different electrical machines. The rotor and stator windings, and the carbon brushes are completely exposed. With the help of magnets, students can also see the rotating electromagnetic fields that exist in certain machines. The machine cost around ₹ 10.3 lakh and was funded entirely by the Institute. The Electrical Machines Lab instructor Mr. Ravinder Yadav expressed his happiness, claiming that the machine was a rarity and would not be found in most IITs.
Oyster Lab (OLAB)
The OLAB was established by the EEE department to support the Micro Electronics program to carry out research and projects in the field of VLSI design. The institute collaborated with stakeholders in the industry like OpenSilicon, Broadcom, LogicVision and Sun Microsystems to build the lab. It boasts full chip analog, digital and mixed signal VLSI design capability through state-of-the-art Electronic Design Automaton (EDA) tools. Cadence, Magma Tool Suite, Mentor Graphics, Altera Quartus Suite and Tanner Tools Pro are some of the design tool sets on offer. The lab is a rarity and can be found in only a handful of locations in India.
The OLAB has a seating capacity of forty and includes the centralized IBM x3650 M4 servers. The lab has a collaboration with Europractice, an ASIC design service to obtain design kits including DSP kits, NIOS-II kits and UMC kits. The lab also features a Mixed Signal Oscilloscope and a Function Generator from Tektronix to test the fabricated chips.
The lab caters to students in the Analog and Digital VLSI Design (ADVD) course, as well as research scholars studying in the field.
Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) Lab
Room 2114 in FD-II hosts the MEMS Lab which was setup in 2008. It is funded by the National Program on Micro And Smart Systems (NPMASS). The lab has a Lindberg Furnace, a Thermal Evaporator, and an ARC Discharge Setup. The Lab has COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software with a Microfluidics Module to help students in modelling and simulation.
The MEMS lab has already churned out a few projects and devices. Students and faculty have developed a Microthermal Actuator, a miniature Automated Pathogen Detector and an ElectroWetting on Dielectric (EWoD) Device. The latter can be used to study the human genome and in pharmaceutical testing. They have also succeeded in developing materials like Carbon nanotubes. Currently, work is being done on nanoswimmers, which could potentially be used in drug delivery and environment monitoring. The instructor at the MEMS Lab lamented that since students have access to cracked versions of various software, very few come to the MEMS Lab, which has limited licensed software, to work on their projects.
The lab caters to students in the Introduction to MEMS elective, higher degree students and research scholars studying in Materials Science and related fields. Students and faculty who have projects in mind are also permitted to use the facilities of this lab.
Power Electronics and Drives Lab
Right next to the Electrical Machines Lab in FD-II is the Power Electronics and Drives Lab (Room 2118). The Lab is funded by both the Institute and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). It has expensive equipment and software, and is used by students and faculty for projects in solid state devices used to control and convert electrical power.
The Lab has OPAL-RT which is a Power Electronics based real time system simulator, and is worth about 15 lakh rupees. The instructor explained that apart from the IITs, very few colleges in the country have access to the complete version of this software. The Standalone Terrasas Photovoltaic SImulator is worth ₹7 lakh. It has a 3-Phase IGBT based Inverter Stack, which has a rectifier, an inverter, and a chopper, along with a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) card. The Lab also has a d-SPACE 1104 Advanced Control Educational (ACE) Kit and DSP Controller kit. The ACE kit can be used to test complex control systems, and implement Simulink models within seconds on the d-SPACE real time hardware. Other equipment like the Spartan 6 FPGA Development Board, the Current Probe, the Differential Probe, 4 isolated-channel DSO, 3 Phase variable Frequency device, etc. go up to a few lakhs each.
The lab caters to higher degree EEE students, research scholars studying in the field, and the EEE faculty. EEE/ENI students enrolled in the Power Electronics course also use the EMac Lab.