Flomerics Announces Workshops on Optimizing Data Center Cooling

The three-day seminar includes two days of training while the third day is devoted to helping attendees model their own data center. “This new workshop will help architects, engineers and facility owners optimize cooling performance and minimize energy costs for both new and existing data centers,” said Paul Rose, Principle Consultant Engineer with Flomerics. “Interested companies can contact us and we will schedule a workshop specially for them at their convenience.”

The first two days of the workshop will explain how to model data centers including the following topics: 1) using templates that provide the basic structure of the layout; 2) creating the room layout including walls, raised floor, etc. 3) adding floor grills from a library; 4) add computer room air conditioners (CRACs) either in the data center or in a utility room; 5) modeling cabinets containing computing and communications equipment; 6) solving the model and generating visual and numeric results; 7) making improvements in the design of the data center to optimize cooling and minimize energy consumption.

The rapid increase in power density of today’s computing and communications equipment has strained traditional data center design methods to their limits. The traditional approach involves calculating the bulk cooling and airflow requirements in the data center then providing a cooling system that can manage the load with plenty of room to spare. Today, however, power densities and overall power consumption have risen to levels where this approach is no longer practical. It has become too expensive simply to throw more computer room air conditioners (CRACs) at the problem. Data center designers now need to understand the local 3D airflow within the room to allocate the existing cooling capacity more efficiently and ensure that every piece of equipment is properly cooled and redundancy requirements are met.

Flovent CFD software provides a solution to this problem. CFD predicts and graphically illustrates the complete 3D airflow patterns as well as temperature and pressure distributions within the data center. This makes it possible to go beyond bulk measurements and make the most efficient use of the cooling capacity by ensuring cool air is directed exactly where it is needed. The user has the opportunity to evaluate changes in the cooling system layout or equipment configuration and optimize the design of the data center for each change. This results in substantially lower initial costs and operating costs for the cooling system while ensuring reliable operation of the data center.