Thermal Characterization of Vortex Flow Layout for Data Center

Data center thermal management is one of the focused research areas worldwide to optimize system performance to reduce electric power consumption [1]. One of the ways is effective airflow management by aisle containment. To achieve this, in this study we proposed vortex hot aisle containment first time in data center research community. The rack arrangement is designed in such a way that the hot aisle airflow can create the vortex due to pressure gradients. To characterize this airflow, we performed initial CFD simulations [2] and started the experimentation. This paper focuses on the experimental details of this study. Four 32U racks with 6U server simulators were tested in raised floor plenum data center facility at School of Commuting in the National University of Singapore. Initial steady-state experiments were performed for vortex hot aisle containment to monitor the rack inlet and outlet air temperature for varying heat load and server fan speed. Results show the favorable pressure variations to generate the vortex airflow inside the vortex hot ails containment and expect to give more insights with some more experiments.