Numerical and experimental investigation of thermal performance in data center with different deflectors for cold aisle containment

Abstract

The rapid development of data center (DC) construction and its high energy consumption problem has caused widespread concern all over the world. Effective airflow management is considered to be a reliable method to improve the utilization of cooling capacity and energy saving of air conditioning system (ACS) in DC. An innovative method of airflow optimization applying deflector in cold aisle containment (CAC) is proposed to improve the uniformity of airflow distribution in this paper. It is found that, in numerical simulation the application of deflector can improve the cooling efficiency of airflow, and the application of convex deflector with height of 1700 mm can obtain the best thermal environment. Meanwhile, the hotspot area of the rack is greatly eliminated and the uniformity of airflow distribution is improved. Furthermore, the thermal performance of DC is compared between the basic and optimal cases under five rack power (1.8 kW, 2.4 kW, 3 kW, 3.6 kW, and 4.2 kW) and three operating parameters (18 °C, 3.5 m3/s; 20 °C, 4.4 m3/s; 22 °C, 5.4 m3/s), and the accuracy of the numerical simulation is verified by field experiments. It is found that the application of the deflectors can reduce the heat accumulation of the rack in different scenarios, avoid the damage to the servers, improve the utilization of cooling capacity, and improve overall thermal environment. Results show that the deflector with optimal structure has wide applicability.