Numerical Study on the Optimized Control of CRACs in a Data Center Based on a Fast Temperature-Predicting Model
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 5
Abstract
Energy consumption in data centers is growing rapidly due to their increasing numbers, scales, and densities. Coordinated operation of the information devices and cooling system is an effective way to lower the energy cost in data centers. Previous studies covered various types of optimization and control approaches, but oversimplified heat transfer models were employed. In this paper, the heat transfer procedures in the data center are studied using numerical simulations of computational fluid dynamics. By neglecting the natural convection of the air, solving the temperature field is decoupled from the velocity field. With this feature, the temperature field for real cases can be calculated by linear superposition of multiple precalculated elementary procedures, saving significant computational time. Based on this technique, an optimized control strategy is proposed to adjust the outlet temperatures of computer room air conditioners (CRACs), with the objective of enhancing cooling efficiency and, in the meantime, preventing information devices from overheating.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51406136) and the Program for Young Excellent Talents in Tongji University (Grant No. 2014KJ025).
References
Bhagwat, H., Singh, U., Deodhar, A., Singh, A., and Sivasubramaniam, A. (2015). “Fast and accurate evaluation of cooling in data centers.” J. Electron. Packag., 137(1), 011003.
Bhopte, S., Sammakia, B., Iyengar, M., and Schmidt, R. (2011). “Numerical and experimental study of the effect of underfloor blockages on data center performance.” J. Electron. Packag., 133(1), 011007.
ComputerWeekly. (2012). “Global census shows datacentre power demand grew 63% in 2012.” ⟨http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240164589/Datacentre-power-demand-grew-63-in-2012-Global-datacentre-census⟩ (Aug. 15, 2016).
Durand-Estebe, B., Bot, C. L., Mancos, J. N., and Arquis, E. (2013). “Data center optimization using PID regulation in CFD simulations.” Energy Build., 66, 154–164.
Fang, Q., Wang, J., Zhu, H., and Gong, Q. (2014). “Using model predictive control in data centers for dynamic server provisioning.” IFAC Proc. Volumes, 47(3), 9635–9642.
Gray, D. D., and Giorgin, A. (1976). “The validity of the Boussinesq approximation for liquids and gases.” Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 19(5), 545–551.
journal.uptimeinstitute. (2014). “2014 data center industry survey.” ⟨https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/2014-data-center-industry-survey/⟩ (Aug. 2, 2016).
Khalifa, H. E., and Demetriou, D. W. (2010). “Energy optimization of air-cooled data centers.” J. Therm. Sci. Eng. Appl., 2(4), 041005.
Launder, B. E., and Spalding, D. B. (1974). “The numerical computation of turbulent flows.” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 3(2), 269–289.
Moore, J., Chase, J., Ranganathan, P., and Sharma, R. (2005). “Making scheduling ‘cool’: Temperature-aware workload placement in data centers.” Proc., USENIX Annual Technical Conf., USENIX (The Advanced Computing System Association), Berkeley, CA, 61–74.
Nada, S. A., Said, M. A., and Rady, M. A. (2016). “Numerical investigation and parametric study for thermal and energy management enhancements in data centers’ buildings.” Appl. Therm. Eng., 98, 110–128.
Parolini, L., Sinopoli, B., and Krogh, B. H. (2008). “Reducing data center energy consumption via coordinated cooling and load management.” Proc., HotPower’08 Proc., 2008 Conf. on Power Aware Computing and Systems, USENIX (The Advanced Computing System Association), Berkeley, CA, 14–14.
Parolini, L., Sinopoli, B., and Krogh, B. H. (2011). “Model predictive control of data centers in the smart grid scenario.” Proc., 18th Int. Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) World Congress, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control), Laxenburg, Austria, Vol. 18, 10505–10510.
Patankar, S. V. (2010). “Airflow and cooling in a data center.” J. Heat Transfer, 132(7), 073001.
Radmehr, A., Kelkar, K., Kelly, P., Patankar, S., and Kang, S. (1999). “Analysis of the effect of bypass on performance of heat sinks using flow network modeling (FNM).” Proc., 15th Annual IEEE Semiconductor Thermal Measurement and Management Systems, IEEE, New York, 42–47.
Samadiani, E., Amur, H., Krishnan, B., Joshi, Y., and Schwan, K. (2010a). “Coordinated optimization of cooling and it power in data centers.” J. Electronic Packag., 132(3), 031006.
Samadiani, E., and Joshi, Y. (2010). “Multi-parameter model reduction in multi-scale convective systems.” Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 53(9), 2193–2205.
Samadiani, E., Joshi, Y., Allen, J. K., and Mistree, F. (2010b). “Adaptable robust design of multi-scale convective systems applied to energy efficient data centers.” Numer. Heat Transfer, Part A, 57(2), 69–100.
Sharma, R. K., Bash, C. E., Patel, C. D., Friedrich, R. J., and Chase, J. S. (2005). “Balance of power: Dynamic thermal management of internet data centers.” IEEE Internet Comput., 9(1), 42–49.
Siriwardana, J., Halgamuge, S. K., Scherer, T., and Schott, W. (2012). “Minimizing the thermal impact of computing equipment upgrades in data centers.” Energy Build., 50, 81–92.
Song, Z., Murray, B. T., and Sammakia, B. (2014). “A dynamic compact thermal model for data center analysis and control using the zonal method and artificial neural networks.” Appl. Therm. Eng., 62(1), 48–57.
Tang, Q., Gupta, S. K. S., and Varsamopoulos, G. (2008). “Energy-efficient thermal-aware task scheduling for homogeneous high-performance computing data centers: A cyber-physical approach.” IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst., 19(11), 1458–1472.
Tang, Q., Mukherjee, T., Gupta, S. K. S., and Cayton, P. (2006). “Sensor-based fast thermal evaluation model for energy efficient high-performance datacenters.” Proc., 4th Int. Conf. on Intelligent Sensing and Information Processing, IEEE, New York, 203–208.
Tao, W. (2001). Numerical heat transfer, 2nd Ed., Xi’an Jiaotong University Press, Xi’an, China.
Tian, H., He, Z., and Li, Z. (2015). “A combined cooling solution for high heat density data centers using multi-stage heat pipe loops.” Energy Build., 94, 177–188.
Wang, Z., et al. (2009). “Kratos: Automated management of cooling capacity in data centers with adaptive vent tiles.” Proc., ASME 2009 Int. Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, ASME, New York, 10.
Wang, Z., Zhang, X., Li, Z., and Luo, M. (2015). “Analysis on energy efficiency of an integrated heat pipe system in data centers.” Appl. Therm. Eng., 90, 937–944.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 5 • October 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 31, 2016
Accepted: Feb 8, 2017
Published online: Jun 22, 2017
Published in print: Oct 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Nov 22, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.