Study on cold aisle diversion structure in underfloor air supply data center

Abstract

In response to the issue of suboptimal thermal performance in traditional data centers, four distinct airflow management structures, namely, composite, linear, convex, and concave diversion plates, were proposed. With Airpak 3.0, numerical simulations were conducted on five different data centers, including the original configuration of the computer room air conditioner (CRAC). The objective was to assess the impact of various airflow management structures on the thermal performance of data centers, with experimental validation of the model. The findings demonstrate that these airflow management structures significantly enhance the thermal performance of data centers. Among them, the composite diversion plate yielded moderate improvements, the convex diversion plate effectively optimized velocity distribution, in spite of limitations on temperature optimization, and the concave diversion plate exhibited non-uniform temperature distribution. Overall, the linear diversion plate proved to be the most effective.

Keywords

• data center
• airflow organization
• cold aisle containment
• diversion structure
• thermal performance