Experimental and numerical investigation of an airflow management system in data center with lower-side terminal baffles for servers

A recent research showed that data centers consumed about 1.3% of total worldwide electricity. Thus, energy conservation in data centers should be paid enough attention to. The impacts of server lower-side terminal baffles (SLTBs) on the thermal environment in data center are optimized by experiments and simulations. In this paper, three different sizes (4 cm × 46 cm, 8 cm × 46 cm and 12 cm × 46 cm) of baffles with six different baffle angles (0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75°) are applied to investigate the optimum airflow distribution. The simulation model was validated by on-site experiments, while the experimental results are in good agreement with numerical results. The measurements show that the use of 45° angle and 8 cm × 46 cm SLTBs can effectively eliminate the heat accumulation and improve the airflow distribution and cooling efficiency in data center. In addition, it can decrease the temperature of the rack hotspot 1.9–2.5K, that reduces significantly the risk of local hotspot and avoid catastrophic damages to the servers. Furthermore, the exhaust air temperature distribution of the upper and lower parts of rack was quite uniform and by using the optimal baffles, the maximum temperature difference reduced from 2.2K to 0.5K.