Application of virtual reality in hospital facilities design

Abstract

The airborne particles present in certain hospital environments, such as the tuberculosis isolation or operating rooms, can be extremely harmful for patients and/or hospital personnel. An important issue during the design of hospital facilities is an efficient airborne particle removal system. A near-optimal setup of the parameters that affect the airflow, and consequently the airborne particle trajectories within the room is desirable. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an alternative to tedious and time-consuming experimental investigations during the design phase, when a large number of alternatives need to be evaluated. The main limitations of CFD application in building design are the high level of skill required, the complexity of the setup phase, and the difficulty of output data interpretation using common 2D (two-dimensional) display devices. A virtual reality (VR) environment can help in overcoming some of these limitations. A CFD/VR procedure for design of contaminant-free hospital facilities is presented in this paper. By means of a VR preprocessing step, inferior solutions can be discharged to drastically reduce the number of configurations to investigate. Then, a CFD/VR tool is used to explore the restricted set of room layouts. The 3D (three-dimensional), immersive visualisation of an indoor space and of the particle motion inside it allows the user to really see the particle flows and consequently understand the effects of room parameters on particle motion throughout the room. In this way a close-to-optimal configuration of the room layout and of the ventilation system can be achieved more speedily and more conveniently compared to traditional CFD investigations.