Experimental characterization of a Rear Door Heat exchanger with localized containment

In the current study, the thermal performance of a rear door heat exchanger is investigated experimentally. The experiments were conducted at the ES2 research data center lab at Binghamton University. A rear door heat exchanger was attached to an isolated equipment cabinet so that the operating conditions could be carefully controlled. On the water side of the heat exchanger, a control system provides for variation of the water flowrate by changing the pump speed. The water supply temperature is controllable by adjusting a three way valve that alters the mixture of fresh cold water with the heat exchanger return water. Both the water supply and return temperatures are monitored remotely. On the air side, a grid of 36 air velocity/temperature sensors installed on a portable frame enabled remote monitoring of the air stream properties. A combination of commercial servers and a 10kW server simulator were used to generate a controllable heat load. A single perforated tile with 65% openness delivers sufficient airflow from the raised floor plenum to the IT equipment. A localized containment system was added to the front of the cabinet in order to control the air inlet conditions to the equipment. The rear door heat exchanger was characterized for a range of different air and water flowrates along with different power generation levels. In addition, the impact of air leakage within the cabinet was studied in relation to the air flow provisioning level.