This research investigates the effects of using aligned/staggered arrangements of cooling units
and top aisles containments on the performance of in-rows cooling architectures of data centers.
Four different configurations of cooling architectures are numerically set up inside identical data
centers of aligned/staggered cooling-units arrangements and with/without top aisles containments.
ANSYS IcePak CFD software is used to build models for the four configurations. A scaled
physical module of the data center is experimentally constructed and tested for model validation.
Air streamlines, velocity vectors and temperature distributions in addition to two-thermal perfromance
indices (SHI and IOM) and two-energy efficiency metrics (β and ηr) are used to evaluate
and compare thermal environmental and energy efficiency performances of the different configurations.
Results show that (i) aligned arrangement has better thermal and energy efficiency
performance, (ii) thermal perfromance and energy efficiency indices of intermediate racks of the
racks array are better than those of end racks, especially in the staggered arrangements, (iii)
thermal environment problem of end racks can be solved by starting and ending racks row by
CRAC units, and (iv) using top aisles containment improves the thermal and energy efficiency
perfromance indices of data centers racks, especially for intermediate racks |
