Thermal Management Strategy of a Small Scale Data Center

This paper studied the thermal management strategies for a small-scale data center with a combination of three hot and cold aisle layouts and air inlet and outlet designs.Computational fluid analysis (CFD) was used to predict the flow characteristics in a data center for 12 designs.The CFD simulation results were further used to assess the data center performance and energy consumption metrics, such as rack cooling index (RCI), index of mixing (IOM), beta index (), and energy utilization index (r).The comparison of results for different solutions found that the hot aisle containment layout produced the most favorable cooling outcome.The design insights learned in the study were used to create a design layout with an improved data center thermal performance.