Modeling and Thermal Simulation of 2U-Rack Servers Applying Computational Fluid Dynamics Techniques

The data center industry consumes between 196 and 400 terawatt-hours annually, between 1% and 2% of the world's energy consumption. A high percentage of data center energy consumption is associated with air conditioning and cooling systems. The optimization of the data center cooling process can occur at multiple scales, being one of the most relevant to the generation and heat transfer processes within servers. In this approach, we must study the temperature fields of each server’s components and understand airflow behavior within the server chassis. The present work, in its first stage, performs a thermal and cooling analysis for a two-unit rack server (2U-Rack) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques via Ansys Fluent code. A geometric server model was developed, considering heat generation in the main electrical components and heat and air mass transfer with the data center. The model was validated by comparing simulation results with the server's sensor values and the results of thermography testing. Following CFD simulation, airflow velocity fields, temperature contours, and sensitivity scenarios were obtained, with the goal of proposing an optimization model that would allow us to improve server heat transfer processes in the following steps.