CFD modeling of pharmaceutical isolators with experimental verification of airflow.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models have been developed to predict the airflow in a transfer isolator using a commercial CFD code. In order to assess the ability of the CFD approach in predicting the flow inside an isolator, hot wire anemometry measurements and a novel experimental flow visualization technique consisting of helium-filled glycerin bubbles were used. The results obtained have been shown to agree well with the experiments and show that CFD can be used to model barrier systems and isolators with practical fidelity. This indicates that CFD can and should be used to support the design, testing, and operation of barrier systems and isolators.