Novel coronavirus infections are spreading quickly with each passing day. This is putting an enormous strain on healthcare infrastructures around the world, with no proven treatment in sight. There is an immediate need for easy-to-manufacture testing and isolation rooms in regions with high population densities, to prepare for a worst-case community spread scenario.
As defined by ASHRAE guidelines,1,2 negative pressure rooms and booths are used for preventing airborne transmission of respiratory diseases in hospitals. In a negative pressure room, a mechanical ventilation system creates an operating pressure lower than the surrounding region so that there is no significant leakage of the contaminated air. Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software can be used to design a modular negative pressure room that is also easy to manufacture. For this study, engineers created and evaluated several ventilation design concepts to identify the most effective for removing contaminated air from the isolation room and best selection for physical prototyping.
View Case Study: Negative Pressure Isolation Room Design (PDF)