Numerical and experimental analysis of the air distribution system in a data center building to improve the thermal performance

The purpose of the management of air distribution systems is to solve the problems in the cooling of data centers through minimizing the hot air recirculation and cold air bypass. In this paper, experimental and numerical analyses are conducted for the AUT data center. The data center performance indices have been compared between experimental and numerical solutions. According to temperature contours at a height of 1 m from the raised floor, recirculation of hot air to the cold aisle enclosure has occurred. For enhancement, the thermal management of the data center, cold aisle enclosure with decreasing supply airflow temperature to 18 , and hot aisle enclosure with return hot air from plenum ceiling to CRAC units were investigated. With the decrease in the total airflow supplied by CRAC units in the cold aisle enclosure and hot aisle enclosure models, the problem of Super-micro servers that experience about 50% more airflow than defined airflow for them in the base model, has been solved. The load on the cooling systems decreased from 13.2 kW up to 7.8 kW in hot aisle containment, the result is a hot aisle is a more suitable and appropriate configuration for the data center.