Author : S.A. Nada, M.A. Rady, M. Elsharnoby and M. A. Said

The racks and perforated tiles locations and spacing with respect to the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) unit can be considered as one of the data center design parameters that may affect the thermal management of the racks servers. In this paper A CFD numerical investigations of the effects of the racks location in the rack row and the spacing between the CRAC unit and the rack row on air flow, temperature distribution and thermal management of the racks servers are presented. Measureable overall performance parameters: supply/return heat indices (SHI/RHI), return temperature indices (RTI) and return cooling indices (RCI) are used to evaluate the thermal management of the servers racks. A typical racks row of seven racks of power density of 3.5 kW per rack and 25% opening ratio of the perforated tiles are considered in this study. Techniques of using cold aisle containments for enhancing the cooling effectiveness of data centers is investigated and evaluated. The results showed that (i) the location of the rack in the racks row strongly affect the thermal management of the rack servers, (ii) changing the spacing between the CRAC units and cold aisle slightly affect the air recirculation and bypass around the racks, and (iii) using appropriate cold aisle containment improves the performance of cooling of data centers.

Keywords: Data centers; CFD numerical investigations; thermal management enhancement; aisle containments

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.5 (Oct-2015)