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Feasibility Study for Installing Machine in Production Line to Avoid

Particle Contamination Based on CFD Simulation
To cite this article: Adisorn Khaokom and Jatuporn Thongsri 2017 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 241 012011

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5th Asia Conference on Mechanical and Materials Engineering (ACMME 2017) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 241 (2017) 012011 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/241/1/012011
1234567890

Feasibility Study for Installing Machine in Production Line to

Avoid Particle Contamination Based on CFD Simulation

Adisorn Khaokoma, Jatuporn Thongsrib*

Computer Simulation in Engineering Research Group, College of Advanced
Manufacturing Innovation, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang,
Bangkok, 10520, Thailand
a
A.khaokom@gmail.com, bJatuporn.th@kmitl.ac.th

Abstract. Ventilation system inside production line for electronic component production needs
to meet the factory standard. Because it can eliminate small particles which may cause of
human or machine in production as well as it can distribute the circulating air temperature
uniformly. CFD is used in this research in order to study the feasibility and plan for machine
layout in production line before actual installation. The simulation shows the airflow in every
area inside production line. From simulation with releasing the particles from human and
machine is found that this ventilation system generates airflow that makes most particles float
out of the machines and no particle downs to the conveyor, it results to contamination. In
addition, the simulation also shows the range of 19-26 0C air temperature that meets the factory
standard. The results of this research are the parts of the data to renovate the production line to
get more efficiency and proper on the production.

1. Introduction
At present, the electronics industry has developed modern production technology for qualified and
good quality products. The component production is essential to work in clean rooms with low particle
contamination. Most of particles in clean room are always caused by friction of machine at work or
any procedures, as well as humans that including the working suit, hair, skin even breathes itself. The
amounts of particles occur depends on each individual human activity [1]. Generally, the sizes of any
contaminant, dust and small particles are from 0.001-100 microns. The particles larger than 5 microns
are typically found on various surfaces and have the potential to float in the air for short time.
This research is cooperated project with one of electronics components manufacturing factories in
Thailand, which plans to improve the production line installing the new machines with new higher
efficiency and technology production. Machine layout in production line inside clean room will
undoubtedly affect to airflow pattern and temperature distribution [2]. Therefore, if study the
feasibility and plan in advance before install machine in production line actually, it makes production
quality good and reduces production cost.
From studying, it was found that Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been applied for
simulating in order to solve any problems related to airflow, temperature and contamination in
buildings and environment. For example, CFD is applied for simulating the airflow in the clean room
of the LCD industry [3] and in the classroom [4] that the simulation results can improve airflow

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5th Asia Conference on Mechanical and Materials Engineering (ACMME 2017) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 241 (2017) 012011 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/241/1/012011
1234567890

quality using CFD. CFD is applied for studying the cooling by simulating the airflow in large-scale
factories by CFD that the simulation results can be used for cooling generated in the factories
efficiently [5]. CFD is applied for monitoring the particle transportation in the office with ceiling
ventilator attaching [6]. CFD is applied for studying the emergence and the distribution of human
particles in the indoor environment [7]. As well as CFD has been used to simulate the airflow in small
environments of clean rooms for hard disk drive factories [8] and in automatic machinery for hard disk
drives production [9]. That the simulation results can be used to determine the best air conditions and
can be really used in the factory to reduce the contamination of particles that may occur in the
automatic machinery for hard disk drive production.
So CFD is used in this research to simulate airflows, temperature and particle traces in production
line under actual ventilation system of factory in order to assess the air quality that if the machines
have been installed whether the efficiency of the airflow will meet the factory standard. The results of
this research will be used to improve the production line for further production.
2. Methodology

2.1. Production Line and Machinery Models

The production line including machines to be installed used for the simulation is in the Class 1000.
The model must be a simple model in order to simplify the simulation setting any environmental
conditions as clean room in the actual factory [8]. The air from air conditioning flows into the FFU
and Ulpa Filter on the ceiling and flows out the return shaft, return ceiling and all 3 sides of wall of the
specific simulation. The laminar is also installed above the machine that the laminar sucks the air
inside the room from the top of the laminar through the HEPA filter, can eliminates the particles
floating in the air. Then release the clean air into the machine for driving the particles to outside
machine in order to minimize particle contamination from the machine and human.
To solve the problem with CFD, aims to find the direction of airflow occurred, heat transfer in a
clean room, and particle behavior caused by machinery and human. The model is created with
decreasing the complexity in the irrelevant parts in order to simplify for simulation by measuring the
size of the real machine. The machine consists of three main parts: 1) Machinery is function of
producing the products; 2) Conveyor is function of transporting the components to the machinery; 3)
Human is responsible for bringing in and out of production as shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 1. Production line Figure 2. Machinery Model with human inside

2.2. Fluid and Mesh Models
The FLUENT program is used based on the models shown in Figs.1 and 2 to create the fluid and mesh
models respectively. Then the mesh model created will be used in further simulation. The fluid and
mesh models used in this work are shown in Fig. 3, respectively. The type, size and quality of the
mesh affect to the time for calculation and the result in the process of this mesh model creation.
The mesh model created, has 1.41 million nodes, 7.3 millions elements of tetrahedron and 0.93 of
the maximum skewness. Based on the mesh analysis, it was found that this mesh model is suitable for
both quality of the result and the time for calculation.

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5th Asia Conference on Mechanical and Materials Engineering (ACMME 2017) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 241 (2017) 012011 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/241/1/012011
1234567890

Figure 3. Fluid and mesh models Figure 4. The position of ventilation system
2.3. Mathematical Modeling
The conservation equations consist of mass (1), momentum (2), and energy (3) conservations.
 / t      v   Sm . (1)
  v  / t     vv   p   g  F , (2)
   E  / t     v   E  p      h J   S .
j j j h (3)
Where  is the static pressure and  g and F are the gravitational body force and external body
forces, respectively. S m and S h are user-defined source terms.
The Transition Shear Stress Transport (Transition SST) [10] is used for turbulence model in this
paper because of its high reliability. Transition SST consists of turbulence kinetic energy (k), specific
dissipation rate (ω), transition momentum thickness Reynolds number (Reθt), and intermittency (γ)
equations. This paper is limited space, therefore the equation cannot be expressed and described at all.
You can study more information in the Reference [11]. The computer must solve 3 conservation
equations and 4 turbulence equations of total 7 equations based on the principle of CFD to find the
solution in the calculation of turbulence model.

2.4. Fluent Settings

Based on environmental conditions measurements from the real factory that affect to small specific
simulations, it was found that the air flows from 2 ways: FFU and Ulpa Filter on the ceiling area with
temperature of 20.50C and 130C respectively. The conditions of inlet air are shown in Table 1.
When the air flows into his specific environmental simulation, laminar installed on machine will
suck the air in the room from the top of the laminar itself through the HEPA filter. Then release the
clean air to the machine for driving the particles to outside machine and flow out to this environment
in 3 ways: return shaft, return ceiling and 3 sides of wall of the specific simulation. The conditions of
out-flow air are shown in Table 2. By the position specified in Figure 4.
In addition, laminar with velocity of 0.45 m/s is installed on machine to blow air into the machine
in order to remove the particles out. The shear stress transport of turbulence model with pressure-
velocity as coupling, momentum, turbulence kinetic energy and turbulence dissipation values
determined as second order upwind, human temperature as 370C, machinery temperature as 270C, and
environment temperature and pressure as 24.50C and 101,250 Pascal, respectively. For the other values
are set automatically by the program as appropriate. This calculation is a steady state of 1,000 cycles
for accurate convergence.
Table 1. Condition of In-flow Air. Table 2. Condition of Out-flow air
FFU Mass Ulpa Filter Mass Return Outflow Wall Outflow Return Outflow
(Position) Flow (Position) Flow Shaft (%) (Position) (%) Ceiling (%)
Rate Rate (Position) (Position)
(kg/s) (kg/s) 1 7.56 1 1.90 1 6.07
1 0.449 1 0.384 2 7.56 2 0.46 2 5.02
3 12.62 3 2.17
2 0.568 2 0.398 4 12.32
3 0.449 3 0.36 5 14.61
6 12.06
4 0.449 4 0.36

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5th Asia Conference on Mechanical and Materials Engineering (ACMME 2017) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 241 (2017) 012011 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/241/1/012011
1234567890

3. Results and Discussion

Airflow in every area of ventilation system was found from this simulation. And this condition may
result in vortex in some areas as shown in Fig. 5 that it occurs in the areas away from the conveyor and
it does not affect to production line. Fig. 6 shows the flow directions that the air flows through the
machine then flow out at Return Shaft. The air velocity average at the conveyor line is 0.24 m/s that it’s
more than the velocity of 0.2 m/s. Therefore, it’s considered as the air circulates at the conveyor is
effective.
By simulating to release 400 particles within the defined time as shown in Fig. 7 found that the
particles caused of human are blew out and eliminated by Return Shaft and laminar, so it’s no
contamination at conveyor line area. Most particles caused of machine are eliminated by the same way
however, there is potential risky for contamination. In the worst case, 3.17% contaminated particles
caused of machine is found from testing releasing 4000 particles.
The simulated results show the temperature distribution of the Ventilation system as shown in Fig.
8. The temperature average at the conveyor is 20.710C; all points are less than 220C that meet the
factory requirement. However, the figure shows that the temperatures coherences are possible to have
humidity, so it’s interesting for further study.

Figure 5. Airflow directions in XZ plane

Figure 6. Airflow direction in ZY plane

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5th Asia Conference on Mechanical and Materials Engineering (ACMME 2017) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 241 (2017) 012011 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/241/1/012011
1234567890

Figure 7. Particle traces caused by machine and human

Figure 8. Temperature inside the production line in XY plane

4. Conclusion
In this study, CFD has been used to simulate the airflow, particle traces and temperature distribution in
production line with planning to install in clean room of factory. The simulation result with various
conditions including actual ventilation system of factory was found that the air flow in production line
has efficiency to avoid the contamination caused of machine and human. In addition, the temperature
in production line is proper and meets the factory requirement. The information from this research will
be used for renovating production line of industrial factory.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank College of Advanced Manufacturing Innovation (AMI) and King
Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) for supporting this research.

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[9] Thongsri J and Pimsarn M 2015 Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 16 509–15
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[11] Ansys Inc 2013 Ansys fluent 15 user’s guide (USA: Ansys Inc)