Experimental investigation of hydrothermal characteristics of data center servers’ liquid cooling system for different flow configurations and geometric conditions
S.A. Nada, Radwan M. El-Zoheiry, M. Elsharnoby, O.S. Osman
Abstract
Due to the rapid growth of power densities of modern electronics devices and data centers servers, liquid cooling using heatsink/cold plate technique become prevalent than air cooling technique of data centers. In the present paper, effects of cold plate flow configurations and geometric parameters on the hydrothermal characteristics of servers liquid-cooling were experimentally investigated. Experiments were conducted at wide ranges of operating conditions and geometric parameters such as server power density, water flow rate, water temperatures, parallel and serpentine flow configurations, number of flow channels and cold plate thicknesses. Thermal resistance, average server temperature, Nusselt number, pressure drop and pumping power are used as measuring perfromance parameters for servers cooling. Experimental correlations are deduced to predict the perfromance parameters in terms of the operating conditions and geometric parameters. Results showed a decrease in thermal resistance and servers' temperature and an increase in Nusselt numbers, pressure drop and pumping power with increasing water flow rate and decreasing water temperature. Also, it was found that serpentine flow configuration has a better thermal performance and a worst hydrodynamic perfromance compared to parallel flow configuration. Increasing number of flow channels and decreasing base thickness of the cold plate provide a better thermal performance on the expense of hydrodynamics perfromance. Using serpentine flow configurations instead of parallel flow and increasing the number of flow channels form 8 to 12 reduce the water flow rate needed to maintain the servers’ temperature within the allowable limit by 69 % and 91 % and increase pumping power by 95 % and 50 %, respectively.