Modelling the invisible
The role of Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis in designing safer healthcare and cleanroom spaces
Designing effective ventilation systems for healthcare facilities poses several challenges. These include preventing the spread of airborne pathogens, maintaining sterile conditions in operating rooms, and ensuring well-functioning ventilation despite medical equipment and staff movement. Minor design flaws – like poorly placed air diffusers or unintended turbulence – can create contamination risks. Traditional design methods often lack the precision to predict how air behaves in these complex spaces under real operating conditions. In addition, ventilation design must align with strict healthcare guidelines and local regulations, which are critical for ensuring both regulatory compliance and the safety of patients and staff. This is where CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis becomes invaluable.
CFD enables to simulate airflow, temperature distribution, and particle transport in virtual models of hospital rooms. It reveals hidden problem areas like stagnant air zones or unintended airflow paths that could carry contaminants. With these insights, designers can optimize ventilation layouts, diffuser positions, and air change rates to meet hygiene standards and improve patient safety before the facility is even built.
Similarly, cleanroom environments – used in pharmaceutical production or electronics manufacturing – must meet strict standards for particle control and airflow uniformity. Design challenges include preventing particle buildup in corners, managing airflow around equipment, and maintaining pressure differentials between zones. Achieving these requirements through trial and error is time-consuming and expensive.
How does the CFD work?
Imagine you want to understand how virus-laden aerosols spread through the air in a hospital when a patient coughs. One option would be to place sensors throughout the building and gather data over several weeks. But there’s a more efficient way: creating a “virtual hospital” on a computer to visualise how the air moves, even in places no sensor could reach. That’s what a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation does.
It works a bit like a CT scan for air: rather than observing only from the outside, we can see inside the airflow how it circulates around a patient’s bed, changes when a door opens or behaves when the ventilation system is switched on. Just as medical imaging helps doctors make a diagnosis without invasive procedures, CFD allows engineers to “look inside” the behaviour of air or fluids without the need to build physical prototypes. This allows us to anticipate issues such as poorly ventilated areas or high-risk zones for infection, and to make more informed, safer design decisions early on.
Halton offers computational fluid dynamics (CFD) services
CFD solves these problems by modelling airflow behaviour and particulate transport within the cleanroom design. It allows engineers to test various room layouts, filter placements, and equipment arrangements to ensure air moves uniformly and contaminants are swiftly removed. This predictive capability supports compliance with ISO cleanliness classifications and reduces the risk of costly redesigns after construction.
What is needed to make a CFD?
To create a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, several key components and steps are required:
- clearly define the physical problem, including geometry, fluid properties, boundary conditions, and initial conditions
- create a computational mesh or grid that divides the physical domain into discrete elements where the numerical Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid flowwill be solved
- select the appropriate solver parameters and turbulence model, depending on the complexity and nature of the flow. Accurate modelling of boundary conditions, such as inlets, outlets and walls, is critical to obtaining realistic results
- once the configuration is complete, the simulation is run using high-performance computing (HPC) workstations or clusters, where the numerical Navier-Stokes equations are iterated until a converged solution is reached
- the results must be verified and analysed,typically using visualisation tools to interpret flow patterns, pressure distribution and other variables of interest
Why choose the Halton CFD simulation service?
These simulations help validate equipment placement and air distribution strategies, ensuring that clean air reaches critical zones while contaminants are efficiently directed toward exhaust systems. CFD analysis is often used to compare alternative solutions during the design or the pre-design phase. It is particularly useful in complex environments like hybrid healthcare spaces with intricate equipment, high cooling loads and staff density.
Including advanced airflow analysis directly into the design process ensures that key decisions around layout, ventilation, and contamination control are informed by accurate, data-driven insights from the outset, reducing the risk of costly modifications or underperforming systems later on. With both design and simulation handled by the same team, communication is more effective, and design iterations can be tested and refined seamlessly. Ultimately, offering CFD as part of an integrated service enhances the overall performance of the design, supports compliance with healthcare or cleanroom standards, and gives clients greater confidence in the final outcome.
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