Interactive Virtual Platform for Simulating a Concrete Compression Test

Laboratory practices in technical degrees are usually crowed, what makes that many students waste the opportunity of putting into practice the knowledge acquired in theoretical classes. Taking this into account, an interactive virtual platform (IVP) is presented in this paper for enhancing students´ self-learning of one of the most commonly material tests used in engineering: the compression test for concrete samples. In order to carry out such innovative teaching approach, a computational modeling of a virtual materials laboratory was developed by authors including an interactive compression test machine. This way, by using this IVP, students can freely interact with the virtual compression machine during out of class study time. According to this approach, the aim of this computational application is essentially didactic, since (i) this tool allows students to get familiar with concrete compression test and, in this way, (ii) the knowledge acquired by means of such tool can be really useful to improve the performance in students´ learning during their later pressential laboratory practices.