Simulation and experimental research on the optimization of airflow organization and energy saving in data centers using air deflectors

Abstract

The airflow organization of the data center directly affects the temperature control performance and the energy efficiency of the cooling equipment. The servers at the bottom of the rack usually suffer from insufficient airflow rate and poor cooling effect. This is because of the limited distance between the bottom servers and the perforated floor, and the small horizontal velocity of the supply air flow. This study aims to improve the uniformity of the cooling airflow in the vertical direction of the rack by the air deflectors, thereby further improving the overall airflow organization in the data center. The size and installation of the deflectors in the data center were optimized according to both the experiment and numerical simulation results. From the results, it is recommended to install the deflector with a width of 100 mm at an angle of 45° under the perforated floor for the rack with the single-side airflow supply. For the rack with the double-side airflow supply, the width of the deflector should be 100 mm and installed at an angle of 30° to the perforated floor to achieve the best airflow distribution. Consequently, the intake airflow rate for the bottom servers significantly increased, and the occurrence of the local hot spots was effectively reduced. The numerical simulation of the airflow organization with and without the deflector was conducted by ANSYS. The results show that, the installation of the deflectors increased the inlet airflow rate for the rack by 16.98% and improved the energy efficiency of the dater center air conditioners by 1.98%.