ABSTRACT
Surgical site infections (SSIs) have gained increasing prominence in recent decades. Bioaerosols are an important factor causing such intraoperative infections. Their distribution can be affected by environmental parameters in the operating room (OR), such as the air supply velocity and room temperature. The research object of this study was a Class I operating room, which has the strictest cleanliness requirements. Four different air supply velocities (0.16, 0.24, 0.29, and 0.33 m/s) and four different room temperatures (18 °C, 20 °C, 22 °C, and 24 °C) formed seven orthogonal experiment cases. The bioaerosols release experiments conducted in an environmental chamber to simulate a full-scale operating room. The experiments could well verify the computational fluid dynamics-based numerical simulation using the renormalization group (RNG) k-ε model as a turbulence model. The experimental and numerical results confirmed that an increase in the air supply velocity would increase the dispersion of bioaerosols particles. An air supply velocity greater than 0.24 m/s can ensure greater cleanliness in the surgical area. Whereas, when the air supply velocity continues to increase (0.33 m/s), it will increase the bioaerosols deposition in the surgical area. In terms of controlling the concentration of bioaerosols in a certain area, 0.24 m/s-0.29 m/s is the optimal range of air supply velocity. However, the distribution of bioaerosols particles is not sensitive to the response of OR room temperature changes.