Effective ventilation is critical to the successful prevention of surgical site infections (SSI) in hospital operating rooms. ASHRAE Standard 170-2008 provides specific requirements for the design of hospital operating room ventilation systems, including specifications for the air change rates, supply air face velocity, room pressurization, diffuser coverage area, return grille locations, and air filtration systems.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become a primary engineering tool for modeling air flow, thermal characteristics, and particle transport in indoor environments. CFD employs advanced numerical methods for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations that requires rigorous validation and verification to insure the quality of the results. The goal of this research project is to verify and enhance the current modeling practices for hospital operating rooms by using a comprehensive and integrated methodology including on-site field experiments, full-scale laboratory experiments, and computational modeling. The knowledge gained through this research project provides valuable information regarding the modeling and characteristics of indoor air distribution and particle transport in hospital operating rooms for engineers, researchers, and medical researchers.