Development and evaluation of a virtual simulation experiment system for the course of fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics is a fundamental course in many disciplines such as civil engineering and hydraulic engineering, with broad applicability and practical significance in engineering. However, the abstractness and multiplicity of its basic concepts hinders students’ first-hand experience during traditional classroom learning, and the time and space limitation of its offline experiment often results in unsatisfying teaching effectiveness. To address these challenges, a set of virtual simulation experiment system is developed for the course of fluid mechanics, along with an external support system to maximize its performance. Evaluation based on curriculum objective achievement shows that this experimental system has significantly improved the teaching effectiveness for the course of fluid mechanics. It promotes students’ independent learning skills and their ability utilizing fluid mechanics knowledge to understand, simplify and solve practical engineering problems.