Numerical study on thermal design of a rack with pulsating heat pipe

摘要

A rack cooling system with pulsating heat pipe in data center is suggested and the heat transfer performance is numerically investigated in the present research.The inner strucuture of the rack is designed and analyzed.The simplified thermal conductivity model of pulsating heat pipe is introduced in numerical simulation and verified experimentally.The temperature of CPUs(Central Processing Units)is evaluated based on the rack electricity power, the working state of pulsating heat pipe, the temperature of the cooling air and the wind pressure of the rack fans.The results show that the CPUs temperature increases with the rack heating power.The start-up of pulsating heat pipe (PHP) leads to the temperature of CPUs decrease and the distribution of temperature of CPUs uniformly.The temperature of CPUs is lower when the temperature of the cooling air decreases or the wind pressure of the fans increases.By installing an inner duct in the rack, the temperature field of the inner air is improved and some "hot spots" areremoved in the rack.The temperature of CPUs is no more than 60 °C in the rack cooling system with load 1380W.