Using advanced simulation to extend the shelf life of temperature-sensitive medical products

Meeting strict requirements

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that vaccines save lives. So do blood and plasma transfusions and the testing and research of biological samples. But none of them can be used to save lives if they are not appropriately stored and transported.

Medical-grade refrigeration is vital and B Medical Systems offers an end-to-end solution of refrigerated devices. Their products have been certified compliant with the European Union Medical Device Regulation (EU MDR) and World Health Organization Performance, Quality and Safety (WHO PQS) process. These include vaccine refrigerators and freezers, blood bank refrigerators, laboratory refrigerators and freezers, plasma freezers, contact shock freezers, ultra-low freezers and transport systems that secure an unbroken cold chain for the safe storage and transport of any medical temperature-sensitive product or sample.

B Medical Systems manufactures products with the highest levels of quality and reliability that meet strict certification requirements.

To meet these demands, B Medical Systems uses Simcenter™ Amesim™ software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, to create system simulations that allow design engineers to virtually assess and optimize the performance of products.

Using Simcenter Amesim to keep things cool

For effective cooling, it’s key to understand and manage the absorption of refrigerant in the oil of the compressor. Engineers at B Medical Systems have used Simcenter Amesim to simulate the effects of decreasing the charge of a unit according to the time and temperature. This helps perfect the design, including the system autonomy that makes sure refrigerators always maintain the necessary temperatures to protect the products stored in them.

Daniel Pires, simulation engineer at B Medical Systems, says support from Simcenter Engineering Services and Consulting services made the difference in being able to create these complex models. “We didn’t know this was possible, but once we explained the challenges of our designs, Siemens Digital Industries Software showed us how we could simulate this with Simcenter Amesim. We can show exactly what will happen in specific conditions or different ambient temperatures, which helps us give clients full confidence in our products and their ability to protect the cold chain.”

Optimizing components

Vittorio Iormetti, head of cooling technology and testing at B Medical Systems, explains that one of the biggest challenges the company faces is the lead time from suppliers of components: “This can impact your entire project timeline and ultimately delay your product launch.”

This means simulation is vital to keeping product development on track. “As we’re developing and improving products, we need to be able to test different components to see how they affect overall performance,” says Pires. “We know which components have shorter lead times and we can get their parameters from the suppliers, so we can try them out in Simcenter Amesim to see if they improve performance and if anything else needs to be changed to accommodate them.”

Saving time and money

Resource planning and allocation is another major challenge the company faces. “Development, testing and quality assurance all take up vast amounts of engineering time,” says Iormetti. “We can’t afford to compromise on quality, but using Simcenter Amesim, we’re able to streamline testing and free up resources for other projects. Now when we’re ready to build a physical prototype we’re much closer to the optimum design so it saves us a significant amount of time.”

“We haven’t found anything that does this as well as Simcenter Amesim,” Pires says. “It allows us to conduct the same amount of testing in one month that would normally take several months using physical prototypes. It’s also a huge space saver as we don’t have hundreds of rooms to carry out tests. Now we can carry out as many virtual tests as we like without worrying about where to conduct them.”

Using Simcenter Amesim can reduce development and testing time by up to 80 percent.

Demonstrating the value of simulation

Pires also points to the user-friendly nature of Simcenter Amesim as a key benefit for the business. “I can open a project file using Simcenter Amesim that someone else worked on a few years ago and understand everything within just a few minutes,” he explains. “I can then make changes and simulate the results to help our design team with a new development – all in only two or three hours. Even if it was created in an older version, it just works. Simcenter Amesim is incredibly robust and reliable.”

Pires highlights how the speed of system simulations is crucial to proving worth to the business: “If it takes weeks or months to create detailed CFD models then management won’t see the value in simulation. They won’t see any reason to change from existing test-based practices. Once I show them this can all be done in less than one week in a system simulation it becomes something the business is much more interested in investing more in.”

The next goal for Pires is to create simulation models that will help the mechanical (CAD) design team make use of the software without becoming simulation experts. “If they need to keep coming to me to create simulations then it holds everything up,” he explains. “But with Simcenter Amesim I can create a model that the mechanical design team can easily adjust the parameters on without my help and it will show them the results immediately.”

"This is crucial to the future success of the business,” says Iormetti. “We’re the leader in vaccine cold chain products, but we need to keep innovating to maintain our position. There are always new standards to meet, new devices to be developed.

Engineering time needs to be optimized to create the best designs in the shortest time. The accuracy and ease of use of Simcenter Amesim plays a big role in making this possible.”