Design Optimization and Characterization of a Mini Heat Exchanger for Data Center Cooling Application

Abstract

In this study, a miniaturized liquid-liquid heat exchanger with high energy efficiency has been investigated analytically and experimentally. The heat exchanger is designed for high performance computing server cooling systems in a data centre. The proposed heat exchanger has been designed and optimized to fulfill the requirements of the heat transfer capacity, energy efficiency and effectiveness with the space constraint in the server racks. The overall size of 20cm (L) ⨯ 4cm (D) ⨯ 4cm (H) is defined for the heat exchanger to be fitted into the 1U server. A total heat transfer capacity of 500W is required for the heat exchanger to meet the power requirement for a typical high performance computing system. Three dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based modelling and simulations have been carried out to mimic the thermal profile and fluid behavior over the proposed heat exchanger. Several design parameters have been optimized to achieve heat transfer target with minimum pumping power. The heat exchanger sample with cross flow arrangement and optimized design parameters has been fabricated, assembled and implemented into an established liquid cooling test system for characterization. the thermal and hydraulic characteristics of the heat exchanger has been characterized and the effectiveness and energy efficiency of the developed heat exchanger have been demonstrated.