scholarly journals Measurement of Air Flow Rate Through Perforated Floor Tiles in a Raised Floor Data Center

2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaibhav K. Arghode ◽  
Taegyu Kang ◽  
Yogendra Joshi ◽  
Wally Phelps ◽  
Murray Michaels

In a raised floor data center, cold air from a pressurized subfloor plenum reaches the data center room space through perforated floor tiles. Presently, commercial tool “Flow Hood” is used to measure the tile air flow rate. Here, we will discuss the operating principle and the shortcomings of the commercial tool and introduce two other tile air flow rate measurement tools. The first tool has an array of thermal anemometers (named as “Anemometric Tool”), and the second tool uses the principle of temperature rise across a known heat load to measure the tile air flow rate (named as “Calorimetric Tool”). The performance of the tools is discussed for different types of tiles for a wide range of tile air flow rates. It is found that the proposed tools result in lower uncertainty and work better for high porosity tiles, as compared to the commercial tool.

Author(s):  
Tianyi Gao ◽  
James Geer ◽  
Russell Tipton ◽  
Bruce Murray ◽  
Bahgat G. Sammakia ◽  
...  

The heat dissipated by high performance IT equipment such as servers and switches in data centers is increasing rapidly, which makes the thermal management even more challenging. IT equipment is typically designed to operate at a rack inlet air temperature ranging between 10 °C and 35 °C. The newest published environmental standards for operating IT equipment proposed by ASHARE specify a long term recommended dry bulb IT air inlet temperature range as 18°C to 27°C. In terms of the short term specification, the largest allowable inlet temperature range to operate at is between 5°C and 45°C. Failure in maintaining these specifications will lead to significantly detrimental impacts to the performance and reliability of these electronic devices. Thus, understanding the cooling system is of paramount importance for the design and operation of data centers. In this paper, a hybrid cooling system is numerically modeled and investigated. The numerical modeling is conducted using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The hybrid cooling strategy is specified by mounting the in row cooling units between the server racks to assist the raised floor air cooling. The effect of several input variables, including rack heat load and heat density, rack air flow rate, in row cooling unit operating cooling fluid flow rate and temperature, in row coil effectiveness, centralized cooling unit supply air flow rate, non-uniformity in rack heat load, and raised floor height are studied parametrically. Their detailed effects on the rack inlet air temperatures and the in row cooler performance are presented. The modeling results and corresponding analyses are used to develop general installation and operation guidance for the in row cooler strategy of a data center.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heran Jing ◽  
Zhenhua Quan ◽  
Yaohua Zhao ◽  
Lincheng Wang ◽  
Ruyang Ren ◽  
...  

According to the temperature regulations and high energy consumption of air conditioning (AC) system in data centers (DCs), natural cold energy becomes the focus of energy saving in data center in winter and transition season. A new type of air–water heat exchanger (AWHE) for the indoor side of DCs was designed to use natural cold energy in order to reduce the power consumption of AC. The AWHE applied micro-heat pipe arrays (MHPAs) with serrated fins on its surface to enhance heat transfer. The performance of MHPA-AWHE for different inlet water temperatures, water and air flow rates was investigated, respectively. The results showed that the maximum efficiency of the heat exchanger was 81.4% by using the effectiveness number of transfer units (ε-NTU) method. When the max air flow rate was 3000 m3/h and the water inlet temperature was 5 °C, the maximum heat transfer rate was 9.29 kW. The maximum pressure drop of the air side and water side were 339.8 Pa and 8.86 kPa, respectively. The comprehensive evaluation index j/f1/2 of the MHPA-AWHE increased by 10.8% compared to the plate–fin heat exchanger with louvered fins. The energy saving characteristics of an example DCs in Beijing was analyzed, and when the air flow rate was 2500 m3/h and the number of MHPA-AWHE modules was five, the minimum payback period of the MHPA-AWHE system was 2.3 years, which was the shortest and the most economical recorded. The maximum comprehensive energy efficiency ratio (EER) of the system after the transformation was 21.8, the electric power reduced by 28.3% compared to the system before the transformation, and the control strategy was carried out. The comprehensive performance provides a reference for MHPA-AWHE application in data centers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaibhav K. Arghode ◽  
Yogendra Joshi

Presently, air cooling is the most common method of thermal management in data centers. In a data center, multiple servers are housed in a rack, and the racks are arranged in rows to allow cold air entry from the front (cold aisle) and hot air exit from the back (hot aisle), in what is referred as hot-aisle-cold-aisle (HACA) arrangement. If the racks are kept in an open room space, the differential pressure between the front and back of the rack is zero. However, this may not be true for some scenarios, such as, in the case of cold aisle containment, where the cold aisle is physically separated from the hot data center room space to minimize cold and hot air mixing. For an under-provisioned case (total supplied tile air flow rate < total rack air flow rate) the pressure in the cold aisle (front of the rack) will be lower than the data center room space (back of the rack). For this case, the rack air flow rate will be lower than the case without the containment. In this paper, we will present a methodology to measure the rack air flow rate sensitivity to differential pressure across the rack. Here, we use perforated covers at the back of the racks, which results in higher back pressure (and lower rack air flow rate) and the corresponding sensitivity of rack air flow rate to the differential pressure is obtained. The influence of variation and nonuniformity in the server fan speed is investigated, and it is observed that with consideration of fan laws, one can obtain results for different average fan speeds with reasonable accuracy. The measured sensitivity can be used to determine the rack air flow rate with variation in the cold aisle pressure, which can then be used as a boundary condition in computational fluid dynamics (CFD)/rapid models for data center air flow modeling. The measured sensitivity can also be used to determine the change in rack air flow rate with the use of different types of front/back perforated doors at the rack. Here, the rack air flow rate is measured using an array of thermal anemometers, pressure is measured using a micromanometer, and the fan speed is measured using an optical tachometer.


Author(s):  
Emad Samadiani ◽  
Jeffrey Rambo ◽  
Yogendra Joshi

This paper is centered on quantifying the effect of computer room and computer room air conditioning (CRAC) unit modeling on the perforated tile flow distribution in a representative raised-floor data center. Also, this study quantifies the effect of plenum pipes and perforated tile porosity on the operating points of the CRAC blowers, total CRAC air flow rate, and its distribution. It is concluded that modeling the computer room, CRAC units, and/or the plenum pipes could change the tile flow distribution by up to 60% for the facility with 25% open perforated tiles and up to 135% for the facility with 56% open perforated tiles.


1984 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100
Author(s):  
D. Prasad ◽  
J.G. Henry ◽  
P. Elefsiniotis

Abstract Laboratory studies were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of diffused aeration for the removal of ammonia from the effluent of an anaerobic filter treating leachate. The effects of pH, temperature and air flow on the process were studied. The coefficient of desorption of ammonia, KD for the anaerobic filter effluent (TKN 75 mg/L with NH3-N 88%) was determined at pH values of 9, 10 and 11, temperatures of 10, 15, 20, 30 and 35°C, and air flow rates of 50, 120, and 190 cm3/sec/L. Results indicated that nitrogen removal from the effluent of anaerobic filters by ammonia desorption was feasible. Removals exceeding 90% were obtained with 8 hours aeration at pH of 10, a temperature of 20°C, and an air flow rate of 190 cm3/sec/L. Ammonia desorption coefficients, KD, determined at other temperatures and air flow rates can be used to predict ammonia removals under a wide range of operating conditions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174425912098418
Author(s):  
Toivo Säwén ◽  
Martina Stockhaus ◽  
Carl-Eric Hagentoft ◽  
Nora Schjøth Bunkholt ◽  
Paula Wahlgren

Timber roof constructions are commonly ventilated through an air cavity beneath the roof sheathing in order to remove heat and moisture from the construction. The driving forces for this ventilation are wind pressure and thermal buoyancy. The wind driven ventilation has been studied extensively, while models for predicting buoyant flow are less developed. In the present study, a novel analytical model is presented to predict the air flow caused by thermal buoyancy in a ventilated roof construction. The model provides means to calculate the cavity Rayleigh number for the roof construction, which is then correlated with the air flow rate. The model predictions are compared to the results of an experimental and a numerical study examining the effect of different cavity designs and inclinations on the air flow rate in a ventilated roof subjected to varying heat loads. Over 80 different test set-ups, the analytical model was found to replicate both experimental and numerical results within an acceptable margin. The effect of an increased total roof height, air cavity height and solar heat load for a given construction is an increased air flow rate through the air cavity. On average, the analytical model predicts a 3% higher air flow rate than found in the numerical study, and a 20% lower air flow rate than found in the experimental study, for comparable test set-ups. The model provided can be used to predict the air flow rate in cavities of varying design, and to quantify the impact of suggested roof design changes. The result can be used as a basis for estimating the moisture safety of a roof construction.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document