CFD Analysis of Data Center Using Open-Source Software: OpenFOAM

The detailed understanding of thermo-fluid flow is necessary for efficient cooling and operation of data center. This understanding can be obtained by performing a CFD analysis of the data center. Data centers are huge in size, and a detailed CFD analysis requires compute resource, time, and expertise in CFD analysis. In this work, we demonstrate use of OpenFOAM for CFD simulation of an industrial-scale data center. We also discuss about an algorithm and a tool that can create geometry from a 2D layout of an industrial data center. The tool creates mesh and carries out simulation without requiring CFD expertise. Thus, eliminating need of a CFD expert for carrying out CFD analysis on a regular basis ensures optimum operation of a data center. We found that CFD simulation of an industrial-scale data center with our algorithm takes about 2 h of time as compared to the manual simulation which takes about a month of man hour. We have also demonstrated that an OpenFOAM results are as good as Ansys Fluent results on a test data center. The CFD analysis of an industrial-scale data center is fast, accurate, cost-effective, and does not require a CFD expertise.