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UNDERSTANDING THERMAL BEHAVIOR IN A DATA CENTER THROUGH CFD MODELING

Abstract

This project examines convection and heat transfer within a small data-center environment—where densely packed electronic equipment generates substantial heat—using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). As modern society increasingly relies on data centers to support cloud computing, digital communication, and information storage, maintaining proper thermal conditions has become critical to ensuring reliability and energy efficiency. Temperature hotspots can compromise equipment performance, so the objective of this study was to develop a simple model to evaluate how equipment spacing influences temperature distribution within the data-center room. Several simulation cases with varying server spacing were conducted to observe changes in airflow paths and thermal patterns. Preliminary results indicate that an optimal spacing exists for achieving favorable thermal conditions. Overall, this project improved our understanding of fundamental thermal behavior in data-center environments and provided valuable experience in setting up CFD models that will support more advanced research in the future.

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