Thermal performance of an air-cooled data center with raised-floor and non-raised-floor configurations

In this paper, the thermal performances of an air-cooled data center with raised-floor and non-raised-floor configurations are compared with respect to the room and ceiling return strategies. The thermal performance of the data center is evaluated in terms of supply heat index, rack cooling index, total irreversible loss, and the number of racks with at least one server exceeding the maximum recommended and allowable inlet air temperature according to American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines. The numerical simulations are conducted providing an insight into the flow and temperature distributions, and thus giving a better understanding of the cooling issues. It is found that using a ceiling return strategy for the return of hot exhaust air to the computer room air conditioning units gives a better thermal performance of the data center, for both raised-and non-raised-floor strategy, as compared to the room return. The findings are then extended to a geometrically complex operational data center to improve its cooling effectiveness. The paper also highlights the drawback of using supply heat index alone as a performance metric.