Experimental investigations of thermal managements solutions in data centers buildings for different arrangements of cold aisles containments

• Thermal management of data centers is experimentally investigated using SHI/RHI indices.
• A scaled physical model data center has been designed and used for experimental tests.
• Effects of using sides and sides and top containments of cold aisle are studied.

Cold aisles containments are used in data centers buildings to improve the thermal managements of the IT servers. In the present study, an experimental investigation of air flow and thermal management of data center buildings is conducted for different arrangements of cold aisles containments. A scaled physical model simulating real data centers is designed using scale modeling theory and constructed for the sake of the present experimental work. The data center scaled model accommodate a row of three racks; each rack included four servers for testing purposes. Three arrangements of cold aisles are tested: (i) free open cold aisle, (ii) semi-enclosed cold aisles where the aisles are enclosed from the sides, and (iii) full enclosed cold aisles, where the aisles are enclosed from sides and top. Front and rear racks temperatures profile, servers temperatures and performance measuring parameters Supply/Return Heat Index (SHI/RHI) are used to evaluate the thermal management/performance of the data centers racks. Experiments were conducted at different racks power densities. The results showed that (i) increasing data centers power density and supplied air flow rates improves SHI but increases servers temperature, (ii) using semi-enclosed cold aisles relatively improve the thermal performance of the data centers, (iii) using full enclosed cold aisles dramatically improve the thermal performance of the data center servers, and (vi) the percentage of enhancement in data centers performance due to using cold aisle containments dramatically increases with increasing the power density.