Indoor Ventilation in Hospital Operating Rooms

Abstract

The design of ventilation in hospital Operating Room (OR) is essential because it influenced the performance of medical staff, safety and comfort. Moreover, ventilation in the OR is crucial to reduce bacteria proliferation and to protect patient and medical staff. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques are increasingly used to study the ventilation in the OR. In this work, some possibilities for OR ventilation design are assessed. The results include both an experimental set of data obtained by a LDA system inside a 1:5 scale model and the corresponding CFD simulations. The results obtained revealed that the application of two air exits configuration ensure a vertical airflow direct by the ceiling onto the OR patient area which may be the best ventilation design. The magnitude of velocity vertical component for the computational results was compared with experimental data. The differences between computational and experimental results increase with increasing distance to the inflation point (y=200). The simulated and experimental velocity profiles are identical and the comparison of results is good.