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Flow regimes and thermal patterns in air-conditioned operating theaters.

Author(s) : KHALIL E. E.

Summary

Airflow characteristics in the air-conditioned surgical operating theatres play an important role to obtain comfort and hygiene conditions. This paper utilizes a full 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to assess the airflow characteristics in surgical operating rooms. The aim of this work is to investigate the flow regimes and air temperature distributions in operating theatres to arrive at a better design leading to improved comfort with the optimal indoor air quality. This investigation made use of a non-commercial CFD Code 3DHVAC in predictions in various operating theatres configurations. The CFD modelling techniques solved the continuity, momentum, energy equations and k-epsilon model for turbulence modelling in the Navier-Stokes equations. The SIMPLE algorithm is used as equations solver. Grid sizes used in the present work exceeded 400,000 grid nodes in some cases which adequately allow better and meaningful predictions of the flow regimes. It was found that the location of the air extract port represents a critical design factor and would have a direct effect on the energy efficiency of the airside of the air conditioning system. This work raises several questions in the room airflow motion prediction techniques such as the effects of turbulence model, grid node generation, thermal interactions, and numerical schemes on the flow regimes. This work concludes with notable considerations that should be fulfilled to obtain efficient air flow regimes in operating theatres.

Details

  • Original title: Flow regimes and thermal patterns in air-conditioned operating theaters.
  • Record ID : 2008-1355
  • Languages: English
  • Publication date: 2006/11/20
  • Source: Source: Climamed 2006, Lyon
    PI-2.6; 185-193; fig.; tabl.; 17 ref.

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