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Conjugate Heat Transfer Modeling of a Cold Plate Design for Hybrid-Cooled Data Centers

Author

Listed:
  • Aras Dogan

    (Design and Simulation Technologies Inc., Eskisehir 26480, Turkey)

  • Sibel Yilmaz

    (Design and Simulation Technologies Inc., Eskisehir 26480, Turkey)

  • Mustafa Kuzay

    (Design and Simulation Technologies Inc., Eskisehir 26480, Turkey
    Department of Civil Engineering, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir 26480, Turkey)

  • Dirk-Jan Korpershoek

    (Blockheating B.V., Terweijerweg 25, 6413 PC Heerlen, The Netherlands)

  • Jeroen Burks

    (Blockheating B.V., Terweijerweg 25, 6413 PC Heerlen, The Netherlands)

  • Ender Demirel

    (Design and Simulation Technologies Inc., Eskisehir 26480, Turkey
    Department of Civil Engineering, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir 26480, Turkey)

Abstract

Liquid-cooled servers can be deployed to reduce the energy consumption and environmental footprint of hybrid-cooled data centers. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model can bring extremely useful insights and results for thermal simulations of air- and liquid-cooled servers in a single environment. In this study, a conjugate heat transfer (CHT) numerical model is developed and validated with experimental data to simulate heat transfer from the CPU to the air and cold plate considering the effect of thermal paste. The cooling performance of an in-house developed cold plate design is thoroughly investigated via the validated CHT model. A dataset containing one hundred samples of various flow, thermal and workload conditions was generated using the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method, which was further utilized in the series of CHT simulations. Finally, a novel empirical equation is proposed for the prediction of heat transfer from the CPU to the air. The accuracy of the proposed equation is confirmed by comparing estimated and simulated results for a test dataset. A thermal analysis of a rack containing air and liquid-cooled servers is performed using the presented approach. The simulation results reveal that the proposed compact model can be used reliably for the thermal simulation of a hybrid-cooled data center.

Suggested Citation

  • Aras Dogan & Sibel Yilmaz & Mustafa Kuzay & Dirk-Jan Korpershoek & Jeroen Burks & Ender Demirel, 2023. "Conjugate Heat Transfer Modeling of a Cold Plate Design for Hybrid-Cooled Data Centers," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-21, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:7:p:3088-:d:1109987
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zimmermann, Severin & Meijer, Ingmar & Tiwari, Manish K. & Paredes, Stephan & Michel, Bruno & Poulikakos, Dimos, 2012. "Aquasar: A hot water cooled data center with direct energy reuse," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 237-245.
    2. Aras Dogan & Sibel Yilmaz & Mustafa Kuzay & Cagatay Yilmaz & Ender Demirel, 2022. "CFD Modeling of Pressure Drop through an OCP Server for Data Center Applications," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-17, September.
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