Heat transfer and air-flow analysis of a non-uniformly cooled data centre

Abstract

Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Turkey, 19-21 July, 2010.

The trend towards deployment of computer systems in large numbers, in dense configurations of servers in a data centre, has led to very high power densities at room level. Establishing the temperature and airflow pattern for a typical data centre is important for the thermal management and ensuring reliable operation. In the project presented here, an operational data centre is studied with the aim of clarifying some of the thermal issues. To this end, air temperature and velocity have been measured and the results will be presented. Further, a CFD analysis has been performed to provide detailed flow and thermal fields. The experimental measurements have clearly identified that the flow distribution in the data centre is very complex and exhibits non-uniformity, with critical hot spots observed in the measured temperature maps. The CFD results were in a reasonable agreement with the measurements, identifying critical regions of limited cooling.