A high-performance airflow design for airconditioning system in data centers

In the Internet data centers (iDCs), a large amount of heat generated by server machines should be removed efficiently from the server rooms so that the room temperature can be controlled at a suitable level to keep these machines in good working condition. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was carried out for various air-conditioning systems, and the ventilation and air-conditioning performance were compared. As the result, systems with both supply and return openings on the ceiling showed the best performance. This system exhibited much better performance than any other conventional systems. In addition, it was flexible with regard to the arrangement of server racks, and it performed well even in case of large heat generation.