Designing effective ventilation strategy for an

Airborne infection isolation room (AIIR) using

CFD
 General Strategies of Airborne Infection
Isolation Rooms (AIIR)
• to control airflow inside the room so that airborne contamination is reduced to a
level that should not allow the cross-infection of other people in the healthcare
facility while providing thermal comfort for the patient

Generally, the following strategies are used for the rooms:

• Maintaining lower air pressures than adjacent spaces (Negative pressure) to
prevent the escape of contaminated air from the room.
• Designing airflow patterns for specific clinical procedures to reduce exposure of
infectious particles for visiting healthcare staff inside the room.
• Diluting infectious particles with large air volumes (ACH) around.
• Air filtration to stop contamination with outside air– HEPA filters, etc

• The main objective of the CFD simulation is to obtain a diffusion pattern and
concentration of the contaminant over the time period after the single coughing
cycle
Design Standards
 Typical construction of isolation room

The actual negative pressure gradient will depend on several factors:

1.The difference in supply and exhaust air volume
2.Airflow path inside a room
3.The physical configuration of the ward.
To maintain a specified pressure level, exhaust air volume needs to be more than the
supply volume and sufficient amount of air-tightness.
 Air filtration unit
• Most of the design standards recommend installing HEPA filters before throwing
air using a fan unit outside of the room.
• Using HEPA 99.97% of particulates with a diameter greater than 0.3 microns can be
filtered using the various principles of trapping the particulates like diffusion,
interception, impaction with electrostatic attraction.
• the use of HEPA filters reduces the risk of viruses infecting outside individuals and
helps in maintaining effective air changes per hour.
• Also, it is recommended that the area in front of exhaust air should be kept clear
avoiding clear obstructions such as carts and furniture.
• Even though the isolation room meets the above specifications, there is still
uncertainty whether the room is refreshed uniformly or there are no stagnant,
under-ventilated areas in the room where infectious contaminants might be
concentrated.
• To analyze this, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be useful in optimizing
airflow patterns within the room and obtain a better understanding of
contamination of this pathogen dispersion characteristics in designing the HVAC
system for the room.
• It also provides insight into thermal comfort for the patient inside.
• Airflow patterns governed by the locations, areas, configurations, and specified
velocities/pressures of the air-supply and exhaust vents of the ventilation system.
• So, the present study analyses the air-flow path and the distribution of
contaminants for different supply and exhaust configurations using CFD.
Problem Statement

It is assumed that the room walls are

adiabatic. To maintain the negative
pressure inside the room, the exhaust
flow rate is modeled 10% more than
supply flow rate.
Case#1: Ceiling supply air diffusers over the right side of the patient’s head and wall-
mounted exhaust air grill on the left side. Placed the 0.2 m above the floor.
Case#2: Relocated patient bed with wall-mounted exhaust air grill over the head of
patient and supply diffuser locations kept same as in case#1.
Case#3: Single exhaust was split into two exhaust located on either side of patient by
retaining patient and supply diffuser locations same as in case#2.
 Numerical simulation procedure
• The diffusion of contamination inside the room is analyzed according to the types,
location of supply and exhaust after the single cough
• To investigate, the dynamics of the ventilation flow and the airborne
contamination in the conditions of coughing of a patient was performed on the
three CFD models.
• The steady-state ventilation flows were computed till the convergence and then
the time-accurate algorithm used to obtain the contamination travel and diffusion
5 sec after the occurrence of a cough. 
• the inlet air suppy flow was specified to have a constant volumetric flow rate of
300m3/hr from each diffuser and was calculated using an air-changing rate of 12
ACH.
• exhaust was set at a constant outflow rate to maintain -7.5 Pa negative pressure 
 Modelling of exhalation air while coughing

Figure 6 (a) & (b) : Experimentally obtained velocity characteristic of cough (Reference – liu et
al.) and approximate coughing characteristic modeled for the simulation

The characteristic of for the various researchers is shown (Figure 6a), but for the
convenience, coughing was modeled with constant upward velocity of 8 m/s as shown in
(Figure 5b). Then the diffusion of contamination is computed for 5 sec after the single cough.
• Coughing characteristics are obtained from “Flow dynamics and
characterization of a cough”.
• The source of pathogen contamination is given from the mouth of the
patient with the mole fraction of 0.02 and modeled using the scalar
transport equation.
• Any settling and deposition of contaminant particles on the surface is
neglected. 
 Figure 7 (a) : Distribution of contamination and velocity vectors at the vertical
plane passing through patient mouth for case# 1

• contaminant concentration of more than 0.5 ppm is greater in case# 1 and case# 3.
• the contaminant is seen to be concentrated at the stagnant area from where it can be
circulated throughout the room and might be dangerous for the healthcare professional
entering the room.
Figure 7 (b) : Distribution of contamination and velocity vectors at the vertical
plane passing through patient mouth for case# 2

area of high contaminant concentration is closer to the exhaust in case# 2, From the
vector plot and streamlines it is clear that the flow in the region is pushing contaminated
air outside the room effectively.
 Figure 7 (c) : Distribution of contamination and velocity vectors at the vertical plane
passing through patient mouth for case# 3

• contaminant concentration of more than 0.5 ppm is greater in case# 1 and case# 3.
• the contaminant is seen to be concentrated at the stagnant area from where it can be
circulated throughout the room and might be dangerous for the healthcare professional
entering the room.
 Diluting effect for the ventilation system

• we conclude that different supply and exhaust locations lead to different airflow
patterns, and hence have different contaminant effects
• Therefore, airflow behavior has a crucial and significant parameter when designing
ventilation systems to enhance the efficiency of infection control within an isolation
room.
 Conclusion
• The properly designed isolation room ensures the safety of healthcare
workers providing treatment to the patient.
• Physical space and the presence of furniture modify the airflow pattern.
• This means an individual CFD study of each specific case is necessary. As
the increase in computational power, CFD is emerging as a powerful
design tool for HVAC engineers

• https://www.simulationhub.com/blog/designing-effective-ventilation-
strategy-for-isolation-rooms-using-cfd