Abstract
The detailed understanding of thermo-fluid flow is necessary for efficient cooling and operation of data center. This understanding can be obtained by performing a CFD analysis of the data center. Data centers are huge in size, and a detailed CFD analysis requires compute resource, time, and expertise in CFD analysis. In this work, we demonstrate use of OpenFOAM for CFD simulation of an industrial-scale data center. We also discuss about an algorithm and a tool that can create geometry from a 2D layout of an industrial data center. The tool creates mesh and carries out simulation without requiring CFD expertise. Thus, eliminating need of a CFD expert for carrying out CFD analysis on a regular basis ensures optimum operation of a data center. We found that CFD simulation of an industrial-scale data center with our algorithm takes about 2 h of time as compared to the manual simulation which takes about a month of man hour. We have also demonstrated that an OpenFOAM results are as good as Ansys Fluent results on a test data center. The CFD analysis of an industrial-scale data center is fast, accurate, cost-effective, and does not require a CFD expertise.
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Abbreviations
- ρ:
-
Density of air (kg/m3)
- g:
-
Gravitational constant 0f 9.81 (m/s2)
- u:
-
Velocity (m/s)
- T:
-
Temperature (K)
- \(\mu\):
-
Dynamic viscosity (kg/ms)
- \(\mu_{t}\):
-
Turbulent viscosity (kg/m.s)
- α:
-
Coefficient of thermal expansion (/K)
- \(C_{p}\):
-
Specific heat (J/kg K)
- \(\kappa\):
-
Thermal conductivity (W/m K)
- k:
-
Turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) (m2/s2)
- \(P_{k}\):
-
TKE production rate (m2/s3)
- \(\epsilon\):
-
TKE dissipation rate (m2/s3)
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Acknowledgements
Authors like to thank Dr. B. P. Gautham, Chief Scientist, TCS Research, for his continuous support in this work and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Research for funding this work.
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Kulkarni, H., Ahmad, D. (2024). CFD Analysis of Data Center Using Open-Source Software: OpenFOAM. In: Singh, K.M., Dutta, S., Subudhi, S., Singh, N.K. (eds) Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power, Volume 3. FMFP 2022. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6343-0_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6343-0_29
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