Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Optimal thermal management of server cooling system based cooling tower

under different ambient temperatures
Wei He a, Jifang Zhang a, Hailong Li a, b, Shengchun Liu a, Yulin Wang a, *, Baoying Lv a, Jie Wei a
a
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Refrigeration Technology, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China
b
School of Business, Society and Engineering, Future Energy Centre, Mälardalen University, Sweden

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

Keywords: To develop a highly efficient and energy-saving cooling system in a data center, this study investigates the
Server dissipation optimal thermal management both on the internal server cooling cycle and external cold source water cycle
Thermal management under different ambient temperatures based on the principle of minimal power consumption. Taking a server
Cooling tower
cabinet of 4.8 kW as the case, an internal indirect water-cooled heat sink cycle and an external cooling tower cold
Energy consumption
source cycle are constructed. A hybrid thermal management model combined with a heat dissipation model and a
Ambient temperature
power consumption model was developed with the aid of MATLAB and TRNSYS. Using this model, the rela­
tionship between the chip dissipation performance attached to the fin-type heat sink and the energy consumption
performance of the cooling system under different water working conditions and ambient temperatures was
analyzed. Finally, to achieve minimal system energy consumption, the optimized inlet temperature and water
flow rates corresponding to different ambient temperatures were obtained by fitting expressions that can better
serve the optimal design of data center cooling systems. Furthermore, when the optimal value was applied using
the year-round temperature of Tianjin, China in the case study, a 21.3% reduction in power consumption and a
4.43% decrease in the power usage effectiveness can be achieved compared to the case without optimization.
Therefore, significant power can be saved in a data center cooling system through thermal management
optimization.

1. Introduction
The demand for data volumes and data analysis requirements is
rapidly increasing, in turn increasing heat flux in data centers, which are
dedicated to house computer systems and associated components [1].
The main heat-producing units in the data centers are the CPU chips in
computer systems. To ensure normal operation of the chip, the chip’s
temperature needs to be maintained in a safe range. Normally, the
deterioration degree of electronic units, such as CPU chips, decreases
exponentially with a decrease in operating temperature. The risk of
deterioration in its processing capacity will be decreased by 50% every
time the working temperature of the chips decreases by 10 ◦ C. There­
fore, with the rapid growth in heat flux, highly efficient cooling systems
have become one of the most important challenges in data center design,
because the performance and life of electronic devices are sensitive to
the working temperature [2]. In other words, efficient cooling methods
and relevant techniques need to be developed for data center design to
improve the life span of chips and reliability of data center systems. The
cooling system for data centers comprises technical air conditioning
systems to collect and transfer the remaining heat to the external
ambient. According to incomplete statistics, the cooling systems
consumed 40% of the power in an entire data center system [3];
excluding IT equipment, these systems exhibit the largest power con­
sumption. In some data centers with low cooling efficiency, the cooling
systems may consume higher energy than IT equipment. Therefore,
highly efficient cooling systems should be designed and developed to
reduce power consumption and remove the remaining heat in chips [4].
Generally, the heat flux in a data center server is less than 50 W cm− 2
and the air flow cooling method is applied. The advantages of air cooling
are its high reliability and mature technology. However, some re­
searchers have indicated that when the heat flux is higher than 50 W
cm− 2, the cooling effect will not increase with an increase in the air flow
rate [5]. In addition, the reduction in air inlet temperature is currently
not recommended because it will cause other new problems, such as
decreasing the substrate for chips to dew point and higher power con­
sumption to decrease air inlet temperature. To avoid these problems,

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wangylok@yeah.net (Y. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2022.118176
Received 29 July 2021; Received in revised form 25 January 2022; Accepted 3 February 2022
Available online 7 February 2022
1359-4311/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
W. He et al.
liquid cooling methods have attracted increasing interest in recent years
[6]. Carbo [3] analyzed the energy-saving potential of liquid cooling and
waste heat recovery by establishing a 1.2 kW small water-cooled data
center test bench and used TRNSYS to build a dynamic model to better
configure the cooling system to display its immense potential. Cheung
[7] quantified how different data center cooling system configurations
enhance the reliability and availability of data centers. Therefore, the
liquid cooling strategy has been verified feasible to cool the data center
with high heat flux [8].
With regard to liquid cooling, the main directions can be classified
into two categories: internal server cabinet heat dissipation and external
cooling source strategy. For server cabinet heat dissipation, Kanbur [9]
introduced single-phase and two-phase immersion cooling systems and
found that these systems are economically infeasible for servers with
power rates below 5 kW because of their higher capital investment costs.
However, it is pointed that they will become more affordable for higher
server power rates with lower future costs. Levin [10] designed a liquid
immersion server and considered the structure, layout, and technical
characteristics of a liquid immersion cooling system. Haywood [11]
employed water and mineral oil to cool data center server cabinets,
which showed potential cooling power savings of 95% compared with
traditional data center cooling systems. Therefore, immersion cooling
systems have great advantages because of their good heat transfer per­
formance; however, their application is limited owing to their high cost.
By contrast, the most current common liquid cooling technology is the
indirect cooling method, which removes server heat by attaching a
liquid radiator around the load unit. Maajej [12], Elanaggar [13], Wang
[14], and Zhu [15] employed a finned air-cooling heat pipe system, a
finned U-shaped heat pipe, an embedded L-shaped heat pipe, and a loop
heat pipe, respectively. Jouhara [14] found that a power conservation of
at most 75% could be achieved by applying a heat pipe free cooling
system. Except heat pipe cooling, the cold plate type liquid-cooling
method has recently been implemented at the server level with IBM
[16], CoolIT Systems [17], and Asetek [18].Comparing the heat pipe
water-cooling radiator and cold plate radiator, the former is that the
evaporator was fixed on CPU chips and the heat collected was trans­
ferred by the evaporation and condensation of the working media from
the inlet server to the outlet server by copper tubes, the latter is that the
cold plate radiator is attached directly on the surface of CPU. Cold plate
cooling technology has a simple structure, low cost, and high reliability
in production; however, it has a higher risk of liquid leakage with low
reliability during application. Therefore, a sealing technology with high
reliability is required. Regarding the outer cooling source strategy,
recent studies have focused on developing free cooling [19] and hybrid
cooling methods to save energy. There is, the different cooling method
switches with the ambient conditions to reduce the total power con­
sumption in cooling systems. Jahangir [20] investigated the importance
of free cooling technology and compared its potential with that of
renewable energy systems. Zhang [21] developed four typical free
cooling systems. Yang [22] provided hybrid cold source operating
modes by switching the traditional mechanical refrigeration mode, part
of the free cooling mode, and all free cooling modes according to
different ambient temperatures. Zhang [23] introduced an integrated
cooling system for mechanical refrigeration and thermosiphon. Based on
the previous review on existing liquid cooling studies, considerable
work has been focused on optimizing the radiator structure to improve
its heat transfer and flow resistance characteristics in terms of internal
server cabinet heat dissipation; moreover, much work has been done on
introducing energy-saving cold source strategies with respect to external
cooling source strategies. However, these studies only focused on the
thermal performance on the internal server cabinet side or on the
external cold source side; there has been no thermal management
research considering both aspects.
In fact, the performance of heat sinks directly affects the parameters
in the server cooling cycle, such as inlet temperature and liquid flow
rates, and the parameters in the server cooling cycle are determined by
2
Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176
the parameter in the outside water-cooling system. In other words, the
heat sink type, cold source, internal server cooling cycling, external cold
source cycling, and ambient temperature affected each other. Therefore,
it is more reasonable to include the above five factors for power con­
sumption analysis of the entire cooling system. Similar research can be
found on air-cooling methods. For example, Estebe [24] proposed a
temperature adaptive control strategy that minimizes the energy
requirement by adjusting the supply air temperature and flow rate ac­
cording to the server room temperature. Liu [25] introduced a data
center equipped with a modular air conditioning system that can change
the fan air volume according to the server load change to reduce energy
consumption. Zhang [26] established a data center energy consumption
model with distributed air flow control that can significantly reduce the
cooling energy consumption of a traditional data center. However,
owing to the different cooling system structures, the research results of
air-cooling systems cannot guide the optimization of thermal manage­
ment of low-energy consumption liquid cooling systems. Therefore,
there is a lack of relevant research on parameter optimization or
matching analysis of the internal server cooling cycle and external cold
source cycle for liquid cooling systems. Therefore, the relationship be­
tween internal server cooling cycling and external cold source cycling
was explored in our previous study [27]. In that study, the main focus
was on the effects of partial load and safe chip temperature on thermal
management based on a fin-type cold plate heat sink and cooling tower
cold source for a given constant ambient temperature.
In summary, exploring the optimal thermal management by
considering both the internal server system cooling cycle and external
cold source system is of great importance; however, there is a lack of
studies on this aspect. In our previous study, thermal management
optimization was initially verified, but with a constant ambient tem­
perature; the cooling system consisted of a cooling tower as the external
cold source cooling system and a fin-type indirect heat sink for internal
server cooling. However, the year-round ambient temperature varies,
and it will have an obvious influence on the cooling performance of the
cooling tower, thus, requiring different optimal conditions for the in­
ternal and external cooling systems under different ambient conditions
Therefore, it is meaningful to explore the optimal thermal management
for different ambient temperatures based on our previous study. This is
the main research theme in this paper. Further, the year-round power
consumption performance was analyzed by taking Tianjin, China as a
case study. According to this research, the optimized parameters and
correlations on internal server cooling water and external cold water
under different ambient conditions were introduced for the data cooling
center design to ensure that the CPU chips operate safely at minimal
power consumption. Compared with previous studies, the innovation of
this paper mainly lies in the establishment of a systematic thermal
management mathematical model for the server water cooling system.
The model can comprehensively analyze the coupling influence rela­
tionship of chip heat dissipation, cooling water operation conditions,
and ambient temperature. In further, basing on the obtained influence
relationship, the different optimal thermal conditions of cooling water
cycle can be performed for the different ambient temperatures, which
can achieve the minimum system power consumption on the premise of
ensuring the highest safe operating temperature of chip.
2. Method
2.1. System construction and experiment apparatus
A data center cooling system based on a fin-type water-cooled heat
sink and cooling tower system was constructed, as shown in Fig. 1. The
system consists of a 4.8 kW server cabinet and a water-cooling system.
Fig. 1(a) shows a schematic of the server cooling system, where the
server cabinet includes 12 chips with a thermal power of 400 W each.
Each chip is equipped with one fin-type water-cooled heat sink at the top
to remove the chip heat to from the cooling water. The fin-type water-
W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of server cooling system, (b) experiment test bench.

cooled heat sink structure of the one-chip unit is marked by Lb, Wb, and saving purposes. However, considering that the cooling tower fan power
Hb, which refer to the length, width, and height of the bottom plate, is low, a cooling tower having a fan without a frequency converter is
respectively. Lf, Wf, Hf, and Sf refer to the length, width, height of one chosen for convenience. In addition, two mass flowmeters with a mass
fin, and space between two fins, respectively. The water-cooling system flow rate adjustment function and some temperature sensors including
consists of a plate heat exchanger, two pumps, and a cooling tower. Two thermocouples and Pt100 type sensor were used in the experimental
water cycles, one is the primary flow cycle on the side of the cooling bench. In experiment, the thermocouples is mainly used to measure chip
tower (run by Pump-1), whereas the other is the secondary flow cycle on temperature by placing it between the bottom of heat sink and the upper
the side of the server cabinet (run by Pump-2), were connected by a plate surface of chip, and the Pt100 type sensors are mainly to measure the
heat exchanger in a countercurrent manner. Analyzing the heat transfer inlet and outlet water temperature of plate heat exchanger. The digital
process, the heat absorbed from the chip is first transferred to the heat power meter is used to measure the pump power. The main parameters
sink, and then is carried by secondary flow water to release it to the first of the equipment and measurement sensors used in the water-cooled
flow water server in the plate heat exchanger. Then, the primary flow system are listed in Table 1.
water carries the heat to the cooling tower, and finally, releases it to
ambient air. qv1, qv2, T1, and T2 denote the primary water flow rate, Table 1
secondary water flow rate, the water inlet temperature of the server, and Main parameters adopted in server water cooling system.
water outlet temperature of the server, respectively.
Items Main parameters
Fig. 1(b) shows the corresponding experimental test bench, which
Cooling tower Rated water flow: 3 m3 h− 1; rated air quantity: 2200 m3 h− 1;
includes a simulated server cabinet, a control module cabinet, and a
motor power: 0.12 kW
water cooling system. The simulated server cabinet comprised 12 Water pump (Pumps- Rated flow: 2 m3 h− 1; rated power: 750 W; efficiency: 0.42
simulated chips and 12 corresponding fin-type heat sinks, where the 1, 2) (variable frequency)
thermal load of each CPU can be controlled by adjusting the heating Plate heat exchanger Heat transfer coefficient: 2025 W K− 1; heat exchange area:
power of the ceramic heating plate attached to the simulated chip sur­ 0.81 m2
Mass flowmeter Max flow rate: 1200 kg h− 1; Accuracy: 0.2; Medium
face and connected to the control module cabinet using an electric wire.
temperature:-50–150 ℃
A power supply and its power-adjustable accessory equipment are Chip temperature Type: E-Type thermocouple; Measuring range: 0-800℃;
placed in the control module, which can adjust the thermal load by sensor Accuracy: A level; Confidence level: 95%
adjusting the supply power. In addition, the control module cabinet can Water temperature Type: Pt 100; Medium temperature:0-300℃; Accuracy: A
sensor level
exhibit the temperature and mass flow data that are transferred using
Digital power meter Type: YOKOGAWA-WT333E; Accuracy: 0.1% of reading;
the temperature and mass flow meter sensors present in the experi­ Confidence level: 95%
mental system. The water cooling system is constructed as shown in Fin-type heat sink Lb = 115 mm, Wb = 78 mm, Hb = 3 mm, Lf = 72.6 mm, Wf =
Fig. 1(a), where the pumps use a variable frequency motor for energy 0.8 mm, Hf = 3.5 mm, Sf = 0.45 mm

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W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

2.2. Modeling and calculation { [ ]}

Rconv = 1/ h Lf Sf (n − 1) + 2ηf Lf Hf (n − 1) (7)
Only limited experimental data can be acquired owing to the re­
where h is the heat transfer coefficient when water flows through the
strictions of practical experimental conditions. To analyze and optimize
heat sink (w m− 2 k− 1), and ηf is the fin efficiency.
the parameters under variable conditions to improve the cooling effi­
The heat transfer coefficient h is given by the following:
ciency by minimizing the power consumption, the mathematical model
was constructed based on this experimental apparatus. The first one is h = Num λf /de (8)
the heat dissipation model of chip, which is used to analyze the chip
dissipation performance attached to a fin-type heat sink by exploring the where Num is the average Nusselt number, λf (W m− 1 K− 1) denotes the
relationships between the water working condition parameters and chip thermal conductivity of the fluid with 0.606 (W m− 1 K− 1), and de (m)
temperature. The second one is the power consumption model of the refers to the hydraulic equivalent diameter, which can be calculated as
water-cooled system, which is used to analyze the energy consumption follows:
of each equipment under different water working under a given ambient ( )
de = 4Ac /Pc = 2Sf Hf / Sf + Hf (9)
temperature (Tatm). The third is the hybrid thermal management model
of the server cooling system, which can obtain year-round power con­
where Ac (m2) is the cross-sectional flow area of the channel, and Pc (m)
sumption analysis by inputting ambient temperature data and optimal
is the wetting perimeter.
fluid working parameters.
According to the Re value, the average Nusselt number is calculated
using the following two cases:
2.2.1. Heat dissipation model of chip water-cooling unit
(a) When the Reynolds number is Re less than 2300, the average
It is assumed that the surface of the heat sink is adiabatic to the
Nusselt number Num is calculated as follows [29]:
ambient and the fluid flow is steady. According to Fourier’s law, for a
{[ }1/3
one-chip water-cooling unit, the chip temperature, Tchip (◦ C) can be 0.33 ]3
Num = 2.22(χ * )− + Nu3 (10)
expressed by the following equation:

Tchip = Tf + QÂ⋅Rtotal (1) where the Nusselt number Nu and length of the heat inlet section χ * can
be expressed using the following criterion [29]:
where Rtotal (K W− 1) is the total thermal resistance, and Q (kW) denotes
the thermal power from one chip, which is a constant value of 400 W in Nu = 8.31G − 0.02 (11)
this study. Tf (◦ C) represents the average temperature of the fluid, which ( )
can be calculated by χ * = Lf / Rede Prf (12)

Tf = (T2 + T1 )/2 (2) where Prf represents the Prandtl number of the fluid.
Here, G can be defined as
The water inlet temperature T1 (◦ C) and water outlet temperature of
[( ]/(
server T2 (◦ C) in the above equation has the following relationship with )2
G = Sf /Hf + 1 Sf /Hf + 1
)2
(13)
Q:
Q = Cp ρqv2 (T2 − T1 ) (3) (b) When the Reynolds number is 2300 ≤ Re < 106, the average
Nusselt number Num can be expressed using the following criterion [30]:
where Cp (J kg− 1 ◦ C− 1) is the specific heat capacity of water, and ρ (kg [ √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
( ) ][ ( )2/3 ]
m− 3) represents the water density.
2/3
Num = (f /8)(Re − 1000)Prf / 1 + 12.7 f /8 Prf − 1 1 + de /Lf ct
Furthermore, according to the heat transfer mechanism, the total
(14)
thermal resistance between the coolant and hot chip can be classified as
follows: the contact thermal resistance Rcont (K W− 1), which appears at where f represents Darcy’s resistance coefficient and Ct is the coefficient
the interface surface between the heat sink plate and chip; conduction for temperature correction, that is,
thermal resistance Rcond (K W− 1), which appears in the heat sink plate;
( )0.01
and convection thermal resistance Rconv (K W− 1) caused by water fluid Ct = Prf /Prw (15)
flow. Therefore, Rtotal (K W− 1) can be calculated as follows:
Rtotal = Rcont + Rcond + Rconv (4) f = (1.82lgRe − 1.64)− 2
(16)

The three thermal resistances are calculated by the following where Prf is the Prandtl number when considering the average fluid
equations: temperature, and Prw is the Prandtl number when considering the wall
(1) The contact resistance Rcont: temperature.
{ [ ] } The fin efficiency ηf is calculated by
Rcont = δs / Lf (n − 1)Sf + nWf λs (5) ( )/( )
ηf = tanh mHf mHf (17)
where n is the number of fins in one heat sink, which in our case it is 38; √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
δs (mm) and λs (W m− 1 K− 1) are the thickness and thermal conductivity Because m = (hp)/(λc A), P = 2(Lf + Wf), and A = Lf × Wf, ηf can be
of the thermal grease, respectively. The constant values of 1.5 (mm) and described as follows [31]:
4.5 (W m− 1 K− 1) [28] are employed for the thickness and thermal (√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ )/(√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ )
( )/( ) ( )/( )
conductivity, respectively. ηf = tanh 2h Lf + Hf λc Lf Hf Hf 2h Lf + Wf λc Lf Wf Hf
(2) The conductivity resistance Rcond:
(18)
Rcond = Hb /(Wb Lb λc ) (6)
2.2.2. Power consumption model of water-cooled systems
where λc = 400 (W m− 1 K− 1) is applied as the thermal conductivity of To calculate and compare the cooling system efficiency, the power
copper. consumed by the IT equipment and cooling system was considered as the
(3) The convection resistance Rconv: main power consumption. Other parts power consumptions, such as
power supply, distribution, and auxiliary equipment were excluded.

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W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

Therefore, the power usage effectiveness (PUE) was applied to evaluate 2.3. Simulation validation
the air conditioning system in a data center as follows [32]:
In experiment, the ambient temperature and humidity were
PUE = (PIT + Ptotal )/PIT = (PIT + Ptower + Ppump− 1 + Ppump− 2 )/PIT (19)
measured by a WSZY-1type temperature and humidity recorder whose
temperature measure error is 0.1℃ and humidity measure error is 0.1%.
where PIT refers to the IT equipment power, and Ptotal denotes the total
The cooling tower was placed close to window and its air fan pipe is
power consumption of the cooling system including Ptower, Ppump-1, and
passed through wall to connect with outdoor ambient. In experiment,
Ppump-2 which demote the power consumption of the cooling tower,
the window always keeps open and the temperature and humidity
power consumption of Pump-1, and power consumption of Pump-2,
recorder was placed on the window to measure the ambient temperature
respectively.
and humidity. By measuring, the experimental and simulation results
TRNSYS, as a complete and extensible simulation environment for
were compared under experimental conditions with an ambient tem­
the transient simulation of systems, was applied to calculate the power
perature of 18 ◦ C and ambient humidity of 51.3%. The constant flow
consumption in the entire cooling system under various working con­
rates of the secondary and primary cooling water with 5.35 and 7.83 L
ditions by coupling all types of internal modules, as shown in Fig. 2. In
min− 1 are taken, respectively. For different server thermal power cases
this model, there are four types of equipment modules containing heat
of 1.63 kW, 1.84 kW, 2.04 kW and 2.40 kW, the comparison results are
exchanger modules (Type 5), cooling tower modules (Type 510), pump
summarized in Table 2, where the parameters of chip temperature
modules (Type 110), and load modules (Type 682). In addition, the
(Tchip) and the power consumptions of Pump-1 and Pump-2 (Ppump-1 and
output module (Type 65) is used to output the required temperature and
Ppump-2) are compared. As mentioned in Section 2.1, the thermocouples
power consumption values after the severe load Q, the pipe mass flow
are used to measure chip temperature and the digital power meter is
rates, the ambient air (Tatm), and all the equipment parameters were
used to measure the pump power.
input into the model.
From Table 2, it can be seen that the simulated value of the chip
temperature is lower than the experimental value; however, the simu­
2.2.3. Hybrid thermal management model
lated value of the pump power consumption is higher than the experi­
A hybrid thermal management model of a server cooling system was
mental value. The main reasons for the chip temperature difference may
introduced based on the heat dissipation and power consumption
be that the contact thermal resistance between the bottom plate of the
models, as shown in Fig. 3. First, the chip temperature (Tchip) is calcu­
heat sink and the chip was relatively larger than the ideal thermal
lated by inputting the load Q, server inlet water temperature (T1), and
resistance used in the simulation; this could have led to a higher
secondary cooling water flow rate (qv2) based on the heat dissipation
experimental cooled temperature of the chip. The main reasons for the
model with the aid of MATLAB software. Second, the cooling system
power consumption difference may be that the uncertainties in the
power consumption (Ptotal) and T1 are calculated by inputting Q,
Nusselt number correlations and some adiabatic assumptions in the
ambient air (Tatm), qv1, and qv2 based on the power consumption model
model, which will lead to a lower experimental power value. The
with the aid of TRNSYS software. Based on the separated operation of
maximum relative error between experimental values and simulated
the heat dissipation and power consumption models, it can be found that
values was less than 8%. Besides, by performing experimental uncer­
the two models can be combined by uniformly applying the same T1
tainty analysis [33], the relative uncertainties of the measured values
value when inputting the same Q and qv2. After combining, for a given
were within 2%. It indicated that the experimental uncertainties and the
safe chip temperature (Tchip), the relationship between the required
relative error of model to experiment were within a reasonable range.
mass flow rate (qv1 and qv2) and the given temperature parameters (T1
Therefore, the aforementioned comparison results and analysis
and Tatm) is obtained. Based on this relationship, qv1, qv2, and T1 can be
demonstrate that the current simulated numerical evaluation and
optimized by minimizing the system power consumption for a constant
experimental data are in good agreement. Thus, the hybrid model
Tatm. Further, the weather data reading and processing TRNSYS module
introduced in Section 2.2.3 is validated.
(Type 109) is introduced to input the year-round ambient temperature
data and corresponding optimal mass flow rates; thus, the year-round
system power consumption (Ptotal,year) is obtained.

Fig. 2. Schematic of TRNSYS simulation construction.

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W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

Fig. 3. Schematic of hybrid thermal management model.

Table 2
Comparison of experimental and simulation results.
Server thermal power Parameter Experimental Simulated Relative error between experimental value and Relative uncertainty of the measured
case item value value simulated value value

Tchip 56.1 ℃ 52 ℃ 7.3% 1.18–1.21%

1.63 kW Ppump-1 0.39 kW 0.42 kW 6.5% 0.89–0.91%
Ppump-2 0.40 kW 0.42 kW 5.4% 1.06–1.09%
Tchip 60.06 ℃ 56.5 ℃ 5.9% 1.65–1.71%
1.84 kW Ppump-1 0.40 kW 0.41 kW 3.4% 1.11–1.14%
Ppump-2 0.41 kW 0.44 kW 6% 0.99–1.01%
Tchip 63.7 ℃ 59.7 ℃ 6.3% 0.71–0.72%
2.04 kW Ppump-1 0.38 kW 0.38 kW 0.8% 1.55–1.6%
Ppump-2 0.44 kW 0.45 kW 1.6% 0.79–0.8%
Tchip 69.2 ℃ 65.3 ℃ 5.6% 1.47–1.51%
2.40 kW Ppump-1 0.39 kW 0.40 kW 2.3% 1.12–1.14%
Ppump-2 0.42 kW 0.44 kW 4.8% 0.8–0.82%

3. Results and discussions

Based on the 4.8 kW server water cooling system equipped with 12

CPU introduced earlier, more simulation calculations are performed in
this section. To clearly explore the influence of the ambient temperature
factor on the optimal performance of the cooling system, the other
possible variable parameters are assumed to be constant. Therefore, a
constant humidity of 50% was used in this study.

3.1. Relation analysis on thermal parameters

To keep the chips under a safe operational temperature, the heat

generated during chip operation should be removed by the cooling
water promptly. A relationship potentially exists between the cooling
water operation (T1, qv1, qv2) and the chip safe temperature Tchip.
Therefore, it is necessary to discuss these correlations.
As shown in Fig. 3 in modeling part, the chip temperatures Tchip is
determined by inlet temperatures of server T1 and secondary water flow
rates qv2. The chip temperature dependency on qv2 and T1 is shown in
Fig. 4. From it, the chip temperature increased with an increase in server
inlet temperature for a constant secondary water flow rate. As for a
constant server inlet temperature, the chip temperature firstly decreased
sharply and then decreased non-obviously with a continually increase in
the secondary water flow rate. These phenomena can be easily explained
by the conservation of energy because the total thermal power is con­
stant. Therefore, a low server inlet temperature and a high mass flow
rate are good for server cooling. However, it will lead to a high power
consumption of cooling system because that more cold energy is
required from outer cold source. Thus, to avoid the high power con­
sumption caused by the overcooling of the chip, it is better to apply the
secondary water flow rate and server inlet temperature when the chip
temperature is exactly at its highest safe working temperature, which is
a key parameter to guarantee the life span of the chips.
The highest safe working temperature for a chip may vary with
Fig. 4. Chip temperature dependency on secondary water flow and inlet
temperature.
different production technologies and chip materials. Tchip = 70 ◦ C was
selected as an example for the case study discussed in this paper. [34]
According to Fig. 4, to meet the chip’s safe temperature, the secondary
water flow rate and server inlet temperature should agree with each
other. There is, the required secondary water flow rate increased with an
increase in the server inlet temperature for a given chip temperature. For
example, when the server inlet temperature were 20 ◦ C and 24 ◦ C, the
corresponding secondary water flow rates of 6.1 L min− 1 and 16.7 L
min− 1 were required to maintain the chip safe temperature of 70 ◦ C.
However, when the server inlet temperature was higher than 24 ◦ C, the
chip temperature cannot be cooled to that chip’s safe temperature,
irrespective of the secondary water flow rate. Therefore, there are the

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W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

limiting server inlet temperature of 24 ◦ C and the corresponding limiting

secondary water flow rate of 16.7 L min− 1.
Because the server inlet temperature is determined by the cooling
water system with the outer cooling source, the server inlet temperature
(T1) dependency on ambient temperature (Tatm) and primary water flow
rate (qv1) are shown in Fig. 5, where a secondary water flow rate (qv2) of
16.7 L min− 1 was applied. From this, for a constant qv2, the achieved T1
decreased with an increase in the qv1 but increased with an increase in
the Tatm. As shown in Fig. 4, the T1 = 24 ◦ C should be achieved to
maintain Tchip = 70 ◦ C when qv2 = 16.7 L min− 1. Therefore, the available
working conditions of qv1 and Tatm should match each other to achieve
that case of T1 = 24 ◦ C. According to Fig. 5, many matched pairs of qv1
and Tatm were available. Therefore, according to the analysis shown in
Figs. 4 and 5, the safe chip temperature can be guaranteed by matching
the parameters of qv2, T1, qv1, and Tatm. Besides, as discussed in Fig. 4,
T1 = 24 ◦ C and qv1 = 16.7 L min− 1 were the limiting parameters to keep
the chip temperature no more than 70 ◦ C; therefore, the limiting
ambient temperature of 27 ◦ C existed as shown in Fig. 5. That means,
when the Tatm is higher than 27 ◦ C, the cooling tower system would not Fig. 6. Pairs of required primary and secondary water flow rate at different
be valid for data center cooling. Therefore, in the present study, we will work conditions (Tchip = 70 ◦ C).
only discuss the conditions under which the T1 and Tatm are not higher
than 24 ◦ C and 27 ◦ C, respectively.
Considering ambient temperatures (Tatm) of 15 ◦ C, 20 ◦ C, 25 ◦ C and
27 ◦ C, Fig. 6 shows the match pairs of primary and secondary water flow
rates at the available server inlet temperatures to ensure that the chip
temperature is at a safe value of 70 ◦ C. From this, the secondary water
flow rate (qv2) displayed rapid growth with an increase in the server
inlet temperature (T1). The change in the primary water flow rate (qv1)
with the T1 was relatively stable for a constant Tatm. However, there was
the higher the Tatm, the higher was the required qv1. In addition, with the
increase in Tatm, the available server inlet temperature range became
narrow. Therefore, the higher the ambient temperature, the smaller the
range of available water working conditions, and vice versa.

3.2. Optimal water operation condition analysis

The different operation conditions of cooling water will lead to

different power consumptions; therefore, the optimal cooling water
operation condition should be determined by minimizing the total sys­
tem power consumption.
When the correlations of the cooling water operation condition pa­
rameters shown in Fig. 6 are used, the corresponding total power con­
sumption and PUE values corresponding to different server inlet
temperatures (T1) are shown in Fig. 7 by taking Tatm = 20 ◦ C as case.
Fig. 5. Server inlet temperature versus ambient temperature and primary water
flow rate.
Fig. 7. Total power consumption and PUE value at different server inlet tem­
peratures (Tatm = 20 ◦ C and Tchip = 70 ◦ C).
From Fig. 7, when the T1 changed between 17 ◦ C and 24 ◦ C, the total
system power consumption was between 0.741 and 0.881 kW, and the
PUE ranged from 1.154 to 1.183. In particular, minimal total power
consumption and PUE values were realized when the inlet temperature
was 18 ◦ C. This is because the total power consumption contains pump
power and cooling tower power. Therein, the power consumption of the
cooling tower is a constant value and does not change with the water
mass flow rate owing to the use of a fan without a frequency converter,
but the pump power consumption changes in the same direction of water
mass flow rate owing to the use of a variable frequency motor in the
pump. According to the water mass flow rate change shown in Fig. 6, it is
easy to determine that a minimum pump power exists because of the
minimum water mass flow rate. This leads to minimal total power
consumption. At the Tatm = 20 ◦ C case, the optimal server inlet tem­
perature was 18 ◦ C, the minimum total power consumption was Ptotal,
min = 0.741 kW, and the minimum PUE value was PUEmin = 1.154.
According to Fig. 6, the corresponding optimal primary and secondary
cooling water flow rate were 5.1 L min− 1 and 4.6 L min− 1 as marked in
Fig. 7.
When the cooling tower is considered as the cold source, the ambient
temperature has a significant effect on the cooling performance of the
data center water-cooled system. To prevent the freezing of water in the
cooling tower, a low limit of Tatm = 5 ◦ C was applied in this study [35].
As mentioned in Section 3.1, the high limit of Tatm = 27 ◦ C was

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W. He et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176

determined; therefore, to serve the various ambient temperature con­

ditions in this application, the optimized values of the primary and
secondary water flow rates and server inlet temperature at different
ambient temperatures from 5 ◦ C to 27 ◦ C are shown in Fig. 8. From it, for
different ambient temperatures, the optimized server inlet temperature
exhibited good linearity, but the optimal primary and secondary water
flow rates displayed good consistency with exponential curves. The
fitting correlations were given in Fig. 8. Therefore, the optimized water
flow rates and server inlet temperature could be calculated conveniently
with the help of fitting correlations, which will contribute to the optimal
design of the data center cooling system when applying the cooling
tower as cold source.
When the optimizations are performed according to Fig. 8, the total
minimum power consumed is shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that the
total power consumption and PUE value increased significantly when
the ambient temperature increases from 5 ◦ C to 27 ◦ C. The total power
consumption values ranged from 0.669 to 0.957 kW, and the PUE values
increased from 1.138 to 1.200. Therefore, with the information shown in Fig. 9. Total power consumption and PUE value of optimized pairs at different
Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, the optimized working conditions of cooling water can ambient temperatures (Tchip = 70 ◦ C).
be reasonably determined and the system power consumption can be
conveniently evaluated for different ambient conditions. It is meaning­
ful to guide cooling system design and performance evaluation

3.3. Year-round power consumption analysis

By employing the optimized data expressed in Figs. 8–9, the year-

round total power consumption is specified in this section by consid­
ering the year-round ambient temperature in Tianjin, China.
The typical year-round ambient temperature in Tianjin is shown in
Fig. 10 (a). Temperatures falling outside the range of 5–27 ◦ C were
excluded because of the application limit of the cooling tower system as
mentioned before. The problem can be solved using cooling methods
such as free cooling for low ambient temperatures and water chilling
machines for high ambient temperatures. However, this is beyond the
scope of this study, and thus, has not been discussed in detail. From
Fig. 10(a), a total of 3778 h of ambient temperatures range from 5 ◦ C to
27 ◦ C, which accounts for 43.1% of one year (8760 h). Responding to
these 3778 h, the corresponding optimized primary and secondary water Fig. 10. Optimized pairs of water flow rates in the case of Tianjin city year-
round temperature in each hour.
flow rates for each hour are shown in Fig. 10 (b-c) basing on the analysis
as shown in Section 3.2. From Fig. 10 (b-c), Pump-1 displayed a larger
variation range of water flow rate than Pump-2 to match the year-round corresponding power consumed by the cooling tower, Pump-1, and
ambient temperature, where the qv1,opt fluctuated between 5 L min− 1 Pump-2 are displayed in Fig. 11. As shown in Fig. 11, the cooling tower
and 18.3 L min− 1, and qv2,opt fluctuated between 4.2 L min− 1 and 12 L consumes constant power (0.12 kW) because of its equipped fixed fre­
min− 1. quency fan. Pump-1 and Pump-2 consumed power ranging from 0.275
When the optimal flow rates are considered, as shown in Fig. 10, the to 0.450 kW and 0.275 to 0.390 kW, respectively. For Pump-1 and
Pump-2, Pump-1 consumed higher power because of its higher water

Fig. 8. Optimal cooling water operation parameters at different ambient tem­ Fig. 11. Power consumption of the cooling tower and pumps in the case of
peratures (Tchip = 70 ◦ C). Tianjin city year-round temperature in each hour.

8
W. He et al.
flow rate as shown in Fig. 10. Among the three parts of power con­
sumption, the power consumption of cooling tower was the smallest and
the two parts of pump power consumption were obvious. Therefore, it is
reasonable to use a variable frequency motor in pump and a fixed fre­
quency fan in cooling tower.
According to above analysis, when the water cooling system is set to
run under different operating conditions as the atmospheric temperature
changes, the minimum system power consumption can be achieved.
Therefore, the water-cooled system should be set to run at an adjustable
optimal working condition in response to different ambient tempera­
tures, which is called the “adjustable mode”. However, in practice, the
optimal working condition of the water-cooled system always runs
under a constant non-adjustable condition in which the constant oper­
ation parameters are chosen according to the highest ambient temper­
ature case, which is called the “non-adjustable mode”. For the two
different modes, the total power consumption in each hour was shown in
Fig. 12. From this, the power saved reached a maximum of 29% when
applying the “adjustable mode” compared to “non-adjustable mode” in
an hour. Therefore, the “adjustable mode” is recommended in
application.
To compare the performance of the “non-adjustable mode” and
“adjustable mode” for the entire year, the total power consumption and
the annual average PUE value are compared and the results are shown in
Fig. 13. The power consumption in the “non-adjustable” and “adjustable
mode” were 4775.7 and 3759.9 kWh, respectively. The annual mean
PUE value in the “non-adjustable mode” and “adjustable mode” were
1.263 and 1.207, respectively. In total, 21.3% of the power can be saved
and 4.43% of the annual mean PUE can be decreased when the
“adjustable mode” is applied. That is because the mass flow rates and
operation temperatures of cooling water are always matched well
responding to variable ambient temperature in entire year to avoid
providing much excessive cooling energy.
4. Conclusions
For the server cooling system constructed in this study, by optimizing
thermal management variables of server inlet water temperature and
water flow rates for different ambient temperature based on a minimal
system power consumption objective, and by analyzing the year-round
power consumptions on two operation modes of “non-adjustable
mode” and “adjustable mode” with Tianjin, China as a case study, the
main findings are as follows:
1. To maintain the safe temperature of the chip at not more than its safe
value of 70 ◦ C, the required secondary water flow rate displayed
rapid growth, but the required primary water flow rate was relatively
Fig. 12. Total power consumption comparison in “non-adjustable mode” and
“adjustable mode” for each hour.
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Applied Thermal Engineering 207 (2022) 118176
Fig. 13. Year-round power consumption and annual mean PUE comparison in
“non-adjustable mode” and “adjustable mode”.
stable with an increase in the server inlet water temperature for a
constant ambient temperature. There are upper limit values of 27 ◦ C
on ambient temperature and upper limit values of 24 ◦ C on server
inlet water temperature when applying a cooling tower system to
meet the required chip safe temperature.
2. For a certain ambient temperature between 5 ◦ C and 27 ◦ C, the
lowest power consumption can be realized at certain working pairs
of the inlet temperature and primary and secondary water flow rates.
In particular, when the ambient temperature was 20 ◦ C, the opti­
mized inlet temperature was 18 ◦ C, and the optimal primary and
secondary water flow rates were 5.1 L min− 1 and 4.6 L min− 1,
respectively. The optimized inlet temperature exhibited good line­
arity with ambient temperature, while the primary and secondary
water flow rates displayed excellent consistency with the exponential
curves. These results can better serve the optimal design for applying
cooling towers to data center cooling systems.
3. Comparing two operating working conditions that take a “non-
adjustable mode” or “adjustable mode” in response to variable
ambient temperatures in an entire year, it was found that the round-
year power consumption of the cooling system was 4775.7 kWh for
the “adjustable mode” and 3759.9 kWh for the “non-adjustable
mode”. A total of 21.3% reduction of the power consumption can be
achieved by applying the “adjustable mode” instead of the “non-
adjustable mode”. Moreover, the annual mean PUE decreased from
1.263 to 1.207. This result indicates that significant power can be
saved by optimizing the working conditions of the water.
The conclusion proves the importance of the overall thermal man­
agement of the cooling system by connecting the internal server cooling
water cycle and the external cold water cycle. Although the results are
obtained on a specific cooling system, the proposed optimization
method can be applied to other cooling systems to guide the system
thermal optimization. However, there are also many limitations in this
study, such as the lack of consideration of the ambient humidity factor
and insufficient experimental data. These aspects will be considered in
future studies. In addition, the optimization of other types of cooling
systems should be further studied.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Wei He: Writing – original draft, Methodology. Jifang Zhang: .
Hailong Li: Supervision. Shengchun Liu: . Yulin Wang: Conceptuali­
zation. Baoying Lv: . Jie Wei: Investigation.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
W. He et al.
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful for financial support from Tianjin Natural
Science Foundation (No.18JCZDJC97100) and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (51806152).
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