Experimental and numerical study of airflow distribution optimisation in high-density data centre with flexible baffles

In this paper, an innovative airflow optimisation method applying flexible baffles (FBs) set in an air inlet of racks is proposed to improve the airflow distribution in a data centre during the later maintenance and optimisation phase for existing data centres. Two models (i.e. without FBs and with FBs) are developed and compared by numerical simulations in Airpak 3.0 packages. An on-site experiment is conducted to validate these two models. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the use of FBs can effectively improve the thermal environment in the data centre. To optimise the effectiveness of FBs, a series of scenarios (i.e. FBs with different sizes and angles) is analysed and compared, based on which an optimisation method of the data centre with FBs is developed. The optimum thermal environment appears when 20-cm FBs with a 75° angle in the vertical direction of the rack are applied. The temperature drop of the hotspot in the racks reaches about 1.5 °C, which can effectively weaken the rack hotspots. In addition, the results demonstrate that the temperature drop at a certain point on the rack is related to the corresponding point temperature and the size of the FBs. The higher the temperature of the point, or the wider the width of the baffle, the greater the temperature drop.