VR Lab: An Engaging Way for Learning Engineering and Material Science

In recent years, virtual reality technology has grown more widely available. This creates new opportunities and methods in the field of education, particularly for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines. This study describes the design and the development of an immersive virtual reality laboratory (VR Lab) that aims to introduce novel activities and practical experiments in the field of industrial engineering and material science that can be highly beneficial for students. The laboratory enables students to experience and learn the macro and micro behavior of various engineering materials. The VR Lab is designed as an open-space room that is digitally divided into multiple learning stations, each of which is dedicated to a specific aspect of the subject. A virtual mechanical tensile test machine may operate with various materials and display the results by combining finite element analysis simulations and stress-strain curve. In another station, students can be transported inside atomic and molecular structures of various materials and can investigate how dislocations and slipping planes influence the mechanical behavior of metals or how the alignment of molecular chains affects the strength of polymers. Immersive VR Lab showed great potential for education. The developed virtual learning stations can be used to complement learning activities and physical experiments that are generally too risky, too expensive, or simply too time-consuming to be carried out in a real classroom, particularly in the STEM area.