MS Thesis Project Opportunity

Carrier Corporation and Numerical Analysis at Lund University

Numerical Simulation of Air Flows in Data Centers

Problem Description:

Data centers accounts for approximately 1% of global energy consumption, and with the rapid expansion of new data centers, this share is growing. Saving energy in data center operations therefore can have a major impact on global sustainability. Data centers are often operated conservatively, to avoid any risk of overheating servers, which sometimes leads to over-cooling and wasted energy as a result. Better operating strategies and controls can tackle this challenge: modeling and simulation are key technologies to gain insights into data center operations to enable such advances. In this project, air flow dynamics in data center server rooms are explored using numerical simulation methods and tools.

Project Description:

The project is about the numerical simulation of air flows in data centers, with the purpose of helping create more efficient cooling. To this end, in a first step, the air flow is modelled using the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with a buoyancy term. To model the effect of the rack and the water cooling, heating and cooling boundary conditions are employed. Additionally, the effect of the fans is described by inflow boundary conditions. Specific topics explored as part of the thesis project are:

Appropriate theory and methodology for air flow simulation in data centers.
Selection of tools and algorithms.
Numerical simulations on simple geometries are used to get insight into the dynamics and control authority of different cooling strategies.

Student profile:

You pursue a degree in Engineering Physics, Engineering Mathematics, Numerical Analysis or Computational Sciences and are interested in Scientific Computing. You like numerical methods for differential equations, modelling and coding. Relevant courses are Numerical Methods for Differential Equations, Simulation Tools, Advanced Numerical Algorithms with Python/SciPy and Numerical Simulations of Flow Problems.

Supporting team:

Philipp Birken (lead LU point of contact: philipp.birken@na.lu.se)

Johan Åkesson (lead Carrier advisor and point of contact)

Clas Jacobson (Carrier Senior Fellow Systems and Controls)

Michael Wetter (LBNL scientist — Modelica implementations and HVAC/R physics)

Carrier has recently opened an office in Lund and is interested in hiring students from successful MS Thesis projects.

References:

[1]: Wangda Zuo, Michael Wetter, Wei Tian, Dan Li, Mingang Jin & Qingyan Chen: Coupling indoor airflow, HVAC, control and building envelope heat transfer in the Modelica Buildings library, Journal of Building Performance Simulation 9(4), 2016, pp. 366–381

[2]: Wei Tian, Thomas Alonso Sevilla, Dan Li, Wangda Zuo & Michael Wetter: Fast and self-learning indoor airflow simulation based on in situ adaptive tabulation. Journal of Building Performance Simulation 11(1), 2018, pp. 99–112,