SCILAB initiative by Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Dept.
29-Nov-2021
The Dept. of Mechanical Engineering has introduced Scilab® coding assignments to all the numerical subjects from third semester to eighth semester students. According to this move, both students and faculty will have to self-learn SCILAB themselves from the spoken tutorials and TBC. There will be numerical sessions to further enhance the Scilab based modelling and simulation skills. The objective behind this move is to introduce mathematical thinking and developing the ability of the student to conceptualize real world engineering problems in terms of math models and also solving them through simulation.
The objectives of using FOSS (Free and Open Source) software is (a) it is free of cost and thus reduce IT costs not only for the institute but also for the students (b)The department expects that students can adopt the same and reduce IT costs in the companies they will work in the future. Most of the premier institutes all over the world are moving towards adopting FOSS. Faculty has hence decided to make it mandatory to adopt this trending best practice.
Scilab® is an alternative free software for commercial software MATLAB to develop mathematical models and simulate using different solution methods. It was originally developed by INRIA and ENPC, France and currently managed by ESG group, France.
This initiative is the first step to introduce the mathematical thinking and coding to main stream mechanical subjects. The department is planning to introduce more FOSS tools such Open Modelica, Ascend, Open FOAM, Code-Aster, CAE-Linux through workshops and assignments in the near future.
