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Cleanroom & Hygienic Zone Design - Air Flow Modelling

Cleanrooms to industry specifications are required for both health care and the manufacture of semiconductors, biotechnology, food and other products sensitive to contamination.  We offer dedicated air flow modelling solutions, exploiting the latest simulation techniques to enable rapid design, improved performance and reduced energy consumption.

Software and Consulting

In the healthcare and electronics industries, process contamination is a primary concern. They manufacture these sensitive products in clean rooms where the concentration of airborne particles is controlled to specified limits, such as BS EN ISO 14644-1. Even in controlled environments, particles are constantly being created and can settle on and contaminate surfaces and products.

Traditional cleanroom and hygienic zone design has relied on historic design rules and experience, with assessment and validation against ISO standards and other regulatory conditions only possible at advanced stages through smoke tests and sensors following mock-up or construction.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) enables air flow within clean environments to be simulated during both concept and detailed design, providing visualisation, insight and guidance into:

  • Dead spots of flow / stagnant zone where particulates or bio-material may settle
  • Air temperatures due to heat sources within the room
  • How to reduce energy consumption and number of air changes required per hour
  • Ventilation design – where to position diffusers and vents
  • Ideal positioning of sensors
  • Comparative flow distribution for smoke test validation

As a “virtual smoke test”, air flow modelling enables multiple design iterations to be performed before significant cost or time is incurred, such as evaluating alternative vent and diffuser arrangements.

Furthermore, it provides much more data to assist your design decisions than a smoke test can alone. Indeed, air flow modelling can even be a valuable tool during proposals to give you and your end users confidence in the concepts put forward.

If you are involved in proposing, designing or modifying cleanrooms and hygienic zones (within manufacturing facilities), we can help you either develop your own inhouse air flow modelling capabilities or support your engineering activies through our comprehensive simulation consulting services.

Using ground-breaking modelling technology, ANSYS Discovery allows you to analyse the effectiveness of your design decisions in a variety of scenarios instantaneously.

For example, you can change the position of vents, diffusers, isolators and restricted access barrier systems (RABS) and immediately see the resulting change in air flow without waiting minutes or hours for results to be computed by conventional CFD.

Geometry can be imported directly from your existing CAD system. Alternatively, Ansys Discovery includes powerful geometry creation and modification capabilities powered by Ansys SpaceClaim to create your models from scratch or to convert scanned data.

If you also require high fidelity simulation capabilities inhouse, we can supply you with the most advanced CFD simulation solution available – Ansys CFD.

For fast, complex or detailed air flow modelling, we offer an experienced, professional service, underpinned by previous projects within the pharmaceutical, healthcare, research & development and manufacturing sectors.

We can provide you with results, feedback and design guidance quickly, working in close collaboration with your own designers and engineers.

Negative Pressure Room (NPR) Design (Courtesy Ansys, Inc)

In today’s highly contagious environment, it is extremely important to minimize risk to doctors and health care staff attending to COVID-19 positive patients. Negative pressure rooms (NPRs) can help to reduce healthcare staff’s exposure to the virus while attending patients. Simulation demonstrates different room designs of NPRs and enables teams to optimize the room design, inlet vent placement and blower capacity to avoid oral and nasal plumes from recirculating in the room.

Optimisation of Decontamination Process to within Cleanrooms (Courtesy: Ansys, Inc)

Decontaminating rooms and facilities – whether in preparation for patients or in places where the virus has been identified – helps contain the spread of the virus and protect the health of the vulnerable. Simulations performed by Ansys partner InSilicoTrials Technologies optimises the decontamination process to ensure clean rooms.

Robot Movement within Cleanrooms (Courtesy: Ansys, Inc)

Using overset mesh in combination with the relative mesh-motion capabilities of Ansys Fluent makes it a straightforward process to simulate the flow induced by the motion of a multi-degree of freedom robot within a cleanroom or hygenic zone.

How Can We Help?

For more information or to arrange an informal, no-obligation discussion on your requirements, please complete the form opposite or contact us below.

From an initial phone call we can often give you an idea of price and time scales.

With subsequent details, we can then send you some solution ideas, scopes of work and a formal quotation.

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