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Experimental parametric study of servers cooling management in data centers buildings

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Abstract

A parametric study of air flow and cooling management of data centers servers is experimentally conducted for different design conditions. A physical scale model of data center accommodating one rack of four servers was designed and constructed for testing purposes. Front and rear rack and server’s temperatures distributions and supply/return heat indices (SHI/RHI) are used to evaluate data center thermal performance. Experiments were conducted to parametrically study the effects of perforated tiles opening ratio, servers power load variation and rack power density. The results showed that (1) perforated tile of 25% opening ratio provides the best results among the other opening ratios, (2) optimum benefit of cold air in servers cooling is obtained at uniformly power loading of servers (3) increasing power density decrease air re-circulation but increase air bypass and servers temperature. The present results are compared with previous experimental and CFD results and fair agreement was found.

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Abbreviations

Q:

Heat gained by air in server (W)

T:

Temperature (°C)

Tref :

Supply air reference temperature (°C)

CRAC:

Computer room air conditioning

RHI:

Return heat index

SHI:

Supply heat index

\(\updelta{\text{Q}}\) :

Heat gained by air before entering the server (W)

in:

Inlet

out:

Outlet

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Benha Faculty of Engineering, Benha University, Benha, 13511, Egypt

    S. A. Nada, K. E. Elfeky, Ali M. A. Attia & W. G. Alshaer

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  1. S. A. Nada
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  2. K. E. Elfeky
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  3. Ali M. A. Attia
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  4. W. G. Alshaer
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Correspondence to S. A. Nada.

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Nada, S.A., Elfeky, K.E., Attia, A.M.A. et al. Experimental parametric study of servers cooling management in data centers buildings. Heat Mass Transfer 53, 2083–2097 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-017-1966-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-017-1966-y

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