External study of thermo-aeraulic flows in a data center and the impact of generators

This project posed several technical challenges during the design and construction phase. One wasthe release of hot air and fumes from the cooling devices and emergency generators. The relatively small space available makes it less obvious that the fresh air flow, the exhaust air and the data center fumes are always separated.

Thus, in CFD modeling the vertical profile of wind speeds is extremely important. It depends mainly on the degree of roughness of the environment, i.e. the tendency of buildings, trees and other obstacles to slow down the wind by opposing its movement. Thus over the entire thickness of the atmospheric boundary layer, the wind speed increases as one moves away from the ground. In our study, to take into account the wind shear we use a methodology similar to a physical wind tunnel by considering the urban environment for a 500m periphery around the study site and by applying a site-dependent velocity profile. This allows us to evaluate the impact of thermal plumes under different wind configurations.