Study of Air Flow Energy within Data Center room and sizing of hot aisle Containment for an Active vs Passive cooling design

摘要

PART I: Comparative Study of Air Flow Energy for Active and Passive cooling designs within Data Center room using CFD. PART II: Analysis for sizing the hot aisle Containment for Active vs Passive cooling designs using CFD In this study, the cooling behavior within the data center room is of interest. The main objective of the study is to consider two different types of cooling designs for a data center room and compare the air flow energy as well as determine critical hot aisle dimension for them. The active cooling design (or perimeter cooling room) includes IT equipment being cooled by CRACs located on either side of the room and the CRACs are blowing air into the cold aisles; the air flow is driven by the CRAC blowers and the rack level fans. The passive cooling design (or Bottom cooling room) includes IT equipment that has cooling coils located underneath to the racks, a bottom cooled unit, with the rack fans being the prime movers of the air flow within the data center room. The IT configuration of these cooling rooms remains constant with hot aisle containment. Each rack has fixed number of servers which only has larger rack fans instead of server fans. Assuming the cooling energy outside of the room remains equal for both cooling designs, the air flow energy is analyzed in both cases to investigate which cooling configuration would have lesser work load over the rack fans. The second aspect of the study is to determine what could be an effective dimension for a hot aisle containment with lower pressure losses.