Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

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Journal of Building Engineering

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jobe

Predictive modeling of thermal parameters inside the raised floor plenum

data center using Artificial Neural Networks
Anashusen Saiyad a, Asif Patel b, Yogesh Fulpagare a, Atul Bhargav a, *
a
Mechanical Engineering, Energy Systems Research Laboratory, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Palaj, Gandhinagar, GJ, 382355, India
b
Mechanical Engineering, Nirma University, Gujarat, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Data centers are large facilities housing numerous IT equipment and supporting infrastructure. Frequent vari­
Artificial neural network ations in IT load, continuous removal/addition/replacement of IT equipment for business requirement, cooling
CFD modeling equipment, air supply settings, design layout, etc. make Data centers dynamic. Such complexities lead to
Datacenter
overcooling and increased energy consumption. To reduce the energy consumption of the data center, a real-time
Predictive model
Thermal management
control framework based on various thermal parameters inside the data center is imperative. Accurate prediction
of various variables affecting the thermal behavior of the data center, especially for the small-time horizon, using
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations requires a large number of computational resources and
physical time, making them unfeasible for real-time control of the data centers. Data-driven modeling especially,
the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) can be potentially helpful in such cases. This study aims to examine the
ANN-based model with Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) to predict thermal variables such as rack air temperature
inside data centers. The ANN-based models for the rack and facility-level system were trained and validated on
the experiments and validated CFD data. The optimum delay for each case was found using cross-correlation
between the input and output parameters of the ANN. The response of the multi-input multi-output ANN
model was validated using R-value and mean square error (MSE). R-value for all the cases was approximately
0.99. This study recommends the use of ANN models for fast and accurate prediction of thermal parameters for
real-time energy-efficient control of the data center system.

1. Introduction
A big data-warehousing facility consisting of several servers (hun­
dreds to thousands), cooling units, and IT equipment in a controlled
environment is commonly known as a data center. These facilities are
today’s one of the critical assets of internet giants and enterprises. Data
centers are increasing rapidly in number with more than 4600 coloca­
tions worldwide and 39% of them situated in the USA [1]. Data centers
were considered for around 1% of global electricity use by Masanet et al.
[2] with a prediction of a threefold increment within the next decade.
According to Jones [3], data centers used an estimated 200 TW-hours
(TWh) in 2018 and contributed around 0.3% to overall carbon emission.
The environmental concerns and higher power cost has triggered the
alarm by the environmental protection agencies. Estimations by Andrae
and Edler [4] suggest that usage of global electricity by data centers will
rise to around 3–13% in 2030 compared to 1% in 2010.
Power consumed by cooling units shares a large part of the total
energy utilized by the data center [5]. Due to time-varying job arrivals
on the servers and cold-hot aisle arrangements, the airflow inside the
data center is highly dynamic. However, the overall power consumption
of the data center can be reduced by efficient cooling strategies. The
knowledge of dynamic thermal parameters inside the data center is
imperative for the development of such control mechanisms.
Since the experimental investigation of the entire flow field is un­
feasible and time-consuming, researchers performed computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to understand data center airflow with
various parameters such as cold air supply-return temperature and rack
inlet-outlet air temperatures [6–14]. CFD models require large compu­
tational resources and processing-time due to complex airflow inside the
data center. These restrictions make CFD models unfeasible for real-time
forecasting required for the optimum cooling strategy.
Instead, the data-driven models trained on the data obtained using

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: anasrsaiyad@gmail.com, anashusen.saiyad@mtech2016.iitgn.ac.in (A. Saiyad), patelasif643@gmail.com (A. Patel), yogeshsfulpagare@gmail.
com (Y. Fulpagare), atul.bhargav@iitgn.ac.in (A. Bhargav).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2021.102397
Received 11 September 2020; Received in revised form 2 March 2021; Accepted 7 March 2021
Available online 17 March 2021
2352-7102/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A. Saiyad et al.
Fig. 1. CAD model used for (a) rack (three racks) and (b) facility level (eight racks from R1 to R8) CFD simulations. The computational domain consists of a cold aisle
in the front of the rack with a cold air inlet from the bottom (No plenum). A hot aisle at the backside of the racks with hot air outlet to the ceiling. The middle rack (in
(a) & R7 in (b)) is divided into four compartments. Each rack was divided into four compartments in (b) [11], [39].
Fig. 2. Generic structure of the neural network.
Fig. 3. Server heat generation rate variation input trend for rack-level
simulations.
validated CFD simulations can be useful for real-time cooling strategies
due to lesser processing time and quick predictions. Iyengar & Schmidt
[15] presented physics-based models to predict the energy utilization
and thermal behavior of a data center. An innovative Data Center Air
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Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397
Table 1
ANN model parameters for the rack-level thermal load as an input.
Parameter Details
Input variables 1. Heat generation rate – 1
Output variables 1. Server rack air inlet temperatures – 8
2. Server rack air outlet temperatures - 8
Delay 30 steps
Number of hidden layers 1
Number of neurons 10
Flow Model (DCAM) incorporating effects of jets from perforated tiles by
mathematical modeling was presented by Lloyd et al. [16]. Fulpagare
et al. developed generalized multivariate rack-level [17] and
facility-level [18] data-driven forecasting models based on a linear
modeling approach that were trained and tested for CFD and experi­
mental data with a prediction capacity of 15 min. A proper orthogonal
decomposition (POD) based model for the prediction of the temperature
field was presented by Samadiani & Joshi [19].
The majority of the prediction models developed by researchers
require more data points and have limitations due to the numerical
stability of the schemes used. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) over­
come these limitations to predict thermal variables inside the data
centers [20]. Athavale et al. [21] compared ANN, Support Vector
Regression (SVR), Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), and POD-based
models to predict rack air temperatures using both steady-state and
transient cases. Their results represent ANN as a vital solution for
transient thermal management of the data center.
ANN has found its application in various fields such as image
recognition, stock prediction, language translation, time-series
response, building energy optimization, etc. ANN has been used for
the prediction and thermal control of energy consumption in the
buildings [22–24]. ANN-based models for the prediction and control of
airflow and temperatures in a data center are discussed in Refs. [20,
25–28].
A power management study on the data center for total cost mini­
mization was performed by Liu et al. [29] using the ANN model.
ANN-based energy consumption and forecasting approach for cloud
computing were studied by Foo et al. [30]. Song et al. [31] developed a
zonal method and ANN for data center thermal management. The model
was intended for enhancement in thermal comfort and energy efficiency
in buildings. These studies suggest ANN models as a promising tool for
smart-control of the data center by adapting its dynamic, multivariate
thermal flow-field in real-time with reduced computational re­
quirements than CFD-based solutions.
Majority of the studies have focused on overall temperatures or flow-
rates, whereas others have predicted rack-level variables using data
obtained from various hypothetical scenarios. In order to capture the
A. Saiyad et al.
Fig. 4. Comparison of CFD and ANN response of rack air temperatures for thermal load input in the rack-level model (Here ‘nn’ represents ANN model results and
‘Sim’ represents CFD simulation results; ‘T_IN_R2_1’ depicts a first thermocouple placed at the inlet of the second server simulator from the bottom and similarly
for others.).
true behavior of rack-level dynamics, past-data of rack-level parameters
is also important. Power consumption by the cooling system of the data
center depends on the temporal variation of various thermal parameters
such as rack air temperatures, air velocities, etc. Optimization and real-
time forecasting of these variables are imperative to minimize the
cooling cost.
In 2016, DeepMind AI developed neural network-based models
considering total IT load, outside air temperature, and cooling equip­
ment; and reduced cooling energy by 40% in Google data centers [32].
According to Google’s white paper [33], 2 years’ worth of data was
implemented to fully train the neural network. Google Inc. has patented
for optimized data center controls using neural networks [34] at the US
Patent Office in 2018.
With this motivation, the present study is focused on the involvement
of rack-level variables as an input of the ANN-based model for real-time,
efficient control to achieve thermal management of the data center. We
aim to use the time series response technique to develop an ANN-based
thermal prediction model. A prediction system with a feedforward and
back-propagation algorithm can be a suitable option for the dynamic
data center. To achieve the ANN prediction model, our research meth­
odology initiated testing of the ANN model for the rack-level CFD
dataset. Further, we validated the same testing for rack-level experi­
mental data. Multi-input multi-output variable data from the facility-
level CFD and experimental data were used to develop the ANN model.
The experiments were performed in the raised floor plenum data
center laboratory [7,8,11,17,35] on the rack, and facility level. CFD
models were developed and validated with experiments [7,11,35] for a
similar facility. These models were further used to simulate various
input cases [35]. CAD models of the three-rack system at the rack and
facility level with cold and hot aisle considered for the CFD analysis are
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Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397
shown in Fig. 1.
2. Artificial Neural Networks
As per Sivanandam et al. [36], “Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are
nonlinear information (signal) processing devices, which are built from
interconnected elementary processing elements called neurons.” These
neurons are analogous to human nerve cells. All neurons in the network
are connected by links with an associated weight. The incoming signal is
multiplied to these weights to obtain net input, and the output signal is
derived after applying activation functions to the net input. A typical
topology of the neural network is shown in Fig. 2. The first layer of the
network is known as an input layer, and it consists of as many nodes as
the number of inputs. Similarly, the last layer is known as an output
layer that can have a number of nodes equivalent to the number of
outputs. The intermediate layers are known as hidden layers.
The output of jth neuron is computed by the following equation (1):
( )
∑
n
yj = f wij Pi + bj (1)
i=1
Where, Pi is the input at the node, multiplied by the weight wij, n is the
number of inputs at the neuron from the previous layer, and bj is the bias,
f is called the transfer function which acts on the total input to the
neuron and gives the output of the neuron yj. The bias refines the per­
formance of the neural network by shifting the transfer function.
For ANN training, the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm is one of
the fastest back-propagating algorithms and is used in this study. In this
algorithm, weights are updated by the Newtonian method as follows
(equation (2)):
A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

Fig. 5. Regression plot for thermal load variation in the rack-level system.

Table 2
ANN model parameters for rack-level tile air velocity as input based upon
simulation results.
Parameter Details

Input variables 1. Tile inlet air velocity – 1

Output variables 1. Server rack air inlet temperatures – 8
2. Server rack air outlet temperatures - 8
Delay 20 steps
Number of hidden layers 1
Number of neurons 10

step-index.
ANN model for each case was trained using the feed-forward back­
propagation method. Experimental as well as CFD data was divided for
each case into two parts. The models were trained using the first part.
Then, the models were validated based on predictions generated using
the remaining part. The low-pass Butterworth filter [37] was used for
Fig. 6. Cold air inlet velocity variation at the perforated tile for rack- the experimental data to reduce the effect of noise.
level system. The validation of the predicted results was performed based on two
[ ] parameters:
Xk+1 = Xk − J T J + μI − J T e (2)
1. R-value – Also known as the coefficient of correlation, it indicates the
where e is a vector of network errors, J is a Jacobian matrix that contains degree of relationship between two variables. R-value ranges be­
the first derivatives of network errors with respect to the weights and tween − 1 and 1. The R-value of 1 indicates that both the variables
biases, μ is a scalar used to control the performance function, and κ is the are in perfect unison, whereas there is no relationship for 0 value.

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A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

Fig. 7. The response of rack temperature for air velocity variation in the rack-level system (here ‘nn’ represents ANN model results and ‘Sim’ represents CFD
simulation results).

2. Mean square error (MSE) – It measures the average squared differ­
ence between the estimated value by the model and the actual value
(equation (3):
1 ∑N
( )2
MSE = ypredicted − yactual (3)
N i=1
Cross-correlation between input and output variables was used to
decide the optimum delay for the ANN model in each case. Some pa­
rameters have been assigned recommended values by the Neural
Network toolbox of MATLAB® for all the cases.
3. Thermal modeling details
The laboratory has a raised floor plenum chamber and ceiling return
type configuration. The cold air was supplied by the CRAC units under
the plenum. At various desired locations in the cold aisle, porous tiles
were placed to allow cold air to enter into the racks. The hot air leaving
from the rear side of the servers was collected and returned from the
ceiling to the inlet of the CRAC units.
42U (1U = 4.45 cm) server simulator rack house 4 server simulators,
each of height 10U. The server simulators were consisting of heaters and
four fans mounted at the back end. Each server simulator had a control
panel for heating load and a fan speed control dial. T-type thermocouple
sensors were placed at the front and rear side of the racks in the vicinity
of the servers to measure the Rack air inlet and outlet temperatures. The
airflow rate at the perforated tile was measured using a tool having an
array of anemometers. In various sets of experiments, the effect of
variation in the CRAC supply air temperature, supply airflow rate, and
heat generation rate of the servers on the Rack air inlet and outlet
temperatures was studied [8,11,13,35].
In actual servers, a part is occupied by the electronic components,
and the remaining part is void to allow the cooling airflow. Fans are
placed at the exit of the server to develop a pressure gradient across the
server and thus, to facilitate cooling air to pass through the servers at the
desired flow rate. Modeling based upon actual internal geometry re­
quires a large computational cost and is not required for the analysis of
the server as a whole. Therefore, in CFD modeling, the servers were
modeled as porous regions to mimic the actual flow physics. The
pressure-drop of the cold air due to internal components of the server
was incorporated by the viscous resistance and inertial resistance for the
porous media. The exit of the servers was modeled as a fan boundary
condition to mimic the actual fan effects of the server simulator. The
server fan curve provided by the manufacturer [38] was used at the fan
boundary condition to relate the pressure drop and flow rate in­
teractions at the boundary. Each server simulator contributed equally to
the total heat-load of a rack. CFD simulations were performed using the
standard k-ε model for incompressible flow along with the Boussinesq
hypothesis. A temporal discretization of 2nd order with a time step of
10− 3 s and a 2nd order upwind scheme was adopted for flow quantities.
4. Methodology and ANN models for various cases
The ANN models were tested for four datasets available from vali­
dated CFD and experimental data on the rack and facility-level data
center. The optimum neural network for each case is decided based upon
various parameters such as auto-correlation, cross-correlation, overall
regression (R), and Mean Square Error (MSE). Delay for the network is

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A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

Fig. 8. Input and response variation trend for Rack-level experiment. (Here ‘nn’ represents ANN model results and ‘exp’ represents experimental results; ‘WM_ … ’
represent thermocouple location).

inlet and outlet of each compartment (Four thermocouples per

Table 3
compartment), resulting in a total of sixteen thermocouples. Here, the
ANN model parameters for rack-level server heat generation rate as input based
thermocouple designated as ‘T_IN_R2_1’ depicts a first thermocouple
on experimental results.
placed at the inlet of the second server simulator from the bottom.
Parameter Details

Input variables 1. Server heat generation rate – 1 4.1.1. Thermal load variation
Output variables 1. Server rack air inlet temperatures – 8 This ANN model consists of one input as thermal load variation in the
2. Server rack air outlet temperatures – 8
Delay 30 steps
second server simulator (Fig. 3) and output consisting of 16 rack air
Number of hidden layers 1 temperatures as mentioned in Table 1 (single input multiple outputs)
Number of neurons 10 with a time-step of 1 min. Cross-correlation is obtained between thermal
load variation (input) and rack air temperatures (output). From the
cross-correlation result, a delay of 30 steps is selected for the ANN model
determined based upon the autocorrelation data of the outputs and
and 10 neurons in the hidden layer. The available CFD data was divided
cross-correlation data of the inputs and the outputs. The optimum
into two parts as shown in Fig. 3. The initial part was assigned for
number of neurons is decided based on network performance.
training the neural network, and the remaining part for validation data.
The response of rack air temperatures is shown in Fig. 4 for selected
locations. As shown in Fig. 5, the overall Regression (R) value is 0.9958.
4.1. Rack level CFD data
Also, the Mean Square Error (MSE) value for this case is 0.58. Values of R
and MSE indicate that neural network response follows the trend and the
Two different cases considered are:
predicted values are closer to the actual values.
1. The rack air temperature variation for thermal load input inside the
4.1.2. Cold air inlet velocity variation
servers
In this case, the ANN model consists of one input (cold air inlet ve-
2. The rack air temperature variation for cold air inlet velocity input at
locity variation Fig. 6) and 16 rack air temperatures as output Table 1
the tile
(single input multiple outputs) with a time-step of 1 min. The optimum
network for this case was found to have a single layer of 10 neurons with
Two different neural networks were created for these two cases. The
20 steps delay based on the correlation values (Table 2).
middle rack as shown in Fig. 1 was divided into four compartments, each
The initial part of the data was assigned for training in the neural
depicting a server simulator. Two thermocouples were placed at the

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A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

Fig. 9. Sensor placement for the rack-level experiment [11].

Fig. 10. (a) input air velocity at the tile, (b) input heat generation rate, and (c) input cold air temperature variations at facility level CFD simulation data.

network (up to 355 min) and the remaining part for validation. The
Table 4 response of rack temperatures is shown in Fig. 7. In this case, the pre­
ANN model parameters for facility-level model based upon simulation results. dicted output has a strong correlation with the target value of overall
Parameter Details Regression (R) as 0.9984, and MSE equal to 0.76.
Input variables 1. Tile air inlet temperature – 1
2. Tile air flow rate - 1
3. Facility heat generation rate – 1
4.2. Rack-level experimental data
Output variables 1. Rack air inlet temperatures – 32
2. Rack air outlet temperatures – 32 For the ANN model based on experimental results, the training data
Delay 5 steps was generated [17]. Each set of data consist of an input and output
Number of hidden layers 1
matrix. The input matrix has a thermal load on the server simulator
Number of neurons 10
(Fig. 8 (a)), and the output matrix has the rack air temperatures as
shown in Table 3. ANN model was generated for the prediction of
temperatures using all data points with a time-step of 1 min. These

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A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

Fig. 11. Response of rack temperature for the facility-level system (CFD). The thermocouple designated as ‘T_IN_R4_1’ depicts a first thermocouple placed at the inlet
of the first server simulator from the bottom, and similarly for others. (Here ‘nn’ represents ANN model results and ‘Sim’ represents CFD simulation results).

Table 5
ANN model parameters for facility-level model based upon experimental results.
Parameter Details

Input variables 1. Cold air inlet temperature - 1

2. Cold airflow rate - 1
Output variables 1. Rack air inlet temperatures - 24
2. Rack air outlet temperatures - 24
Delay 5 steps
Number of hidden layers 1
Number of neurons 20

Table 6
R-value and MSE for all the cases.
Fig. 12. Input variation for the facility-level experiment. Case R-value MSE

Thermal load variation in rack level CFD 0.99583 0.58

predictions were compared with the experimental counterparts for the Air velocity at tile variation in rack level CFD 0.99848 0.76
same settings. Here, the neural network consists of 10 neurons with a Facility level CFD 0.99877 0.42
delay of 30 time-steps. The available data was divided into two parts. Rack level Experiment 0.97704 1.12
Facility level Experiment 0.99689 0.68
The initial part was assigned for training the neural network (data up to
550 min) and the remaining part for validation. The response of rack

8
A. Saiyad et al.
Fig. 13. Rack air temperature response from the facility-level experiment (Here ‘nn’ represents ANN model results and ‘WM_’ represents thermocouple location).
temperatures WM10_J1, WM10_J2, WM10_J3 (sensor position in Fig. 9)
is shown in Fig. 8 (b)–(d). In this case, R-value was 0.97704, and the
maximum MSE of 1.12.
4.3. Facility-level CFD data
CFD modeling was performed considering three variations for the
facility-level model:
1. The rack air temperature variation for thermal load input at the
facility
2. The rack air temperature variation for air velocity input at the tile
3. The rack air temperature variation for cold air temperature input at
the tile
To have a general case, all three inputs were combined (Fig. 10).
Thus, the ANN model consists of 3 inputs and 64 rack air temperatures as
output (Table 4) (multi input-multi output). The model was trained on
all data points with a time-step of 1 min. As shown in Fig. 1 (b), the
facility-level system consisted of 8 racks with each rack divided into four
compartments. Each compartment has a thermocouple at the inlet as
well as at the outlet resulting in a total of 64 temperatures. The optimum
network for this case was found to have a single layer with ten neurons
and five steps delay.
The responses of rack air temperatures are shown in Fig. 11 for
selected compartments and found to be in good agreement. Here, the
thermocouple designated as ‘T_IN_R4_1’ depicts a first thermocouple
placed at the inlet of the first server simulator from the top, and similarly
for others. The predicted output has a strong correlation with the target
with overall regression (R) value of 0.9987 and MSE value equal to 0.42.
4.4. Facility-level experimental data
In this case, the input matrix has cold supply air temperature, and the
supply airflow rate as input parameters (Fig. 12), and the output matrix
has 48 rack air temperatures (Table 5) (multi input-multi output). ANN
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Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397
model was trained to predict the rack air temperatures based on the
experimental data at all data points with a time-step of 1 min. These
predictions were compared with their experimental counterparts for the
same settings. The optimum neural network, in this case, has a single
layer with 20 neurons and a delay of 5 time-steps (see Table 6).
In this case, available data was divided into four parts as shown in
Fig. 12, to have two data sets for each model. The results for selected
temperatures are shown in Fig. 13. The predicted results have a strong
correlation with the target values and are evident from the overall R-
value of 0.9968 and MSE of 0.68.
5. Conclusions
This study explores the usage of the Artificial Neural Networks model
using time series response techniques for the rack and facility-level
thermal predictions using multi-input multi-output (MIMO) data cen­
ter system variables. Initially, the rack level CFD dataset was used for
testing of ANN model. This model was validated with the experimental
dataset and then extended for the MIMO dataset from the facility level
CFD & experimental dataset. We observed that R-value for all the cases
was approximately 0.99, which shows a strong correlation between the
predicted value and the actual value with minimum MSE values. The
computational time for all the cases ranged from 10 to 30 s, which is
insignificant as compared to the CFD simulation.
The uniqueness of this study presents that the data center building
dynamic environment can be predicted as ANN models using the real-
time and past datasets avoiding the use of computationally expensive
CFD models. One of the major challenges of developing a good predic­
tion model that encompasses the dynamic building environment of the
system can be resolved using the ANN model. Real-time prediction of
thermal parameters is imperative to reduce cooling energy and for
optimal building energy management. Therefore, a real-time control
mechanism can be developed for the cooling system of the data center
based on the ANN model response to optimize building energy demand
and management.
A. Saiyad et al. Journal of Building Engineering 42 (2021) 102397

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