Data Center Software: Flow Network Functionality

Flow network simulation is used to create simplified network models of piping/duct and flow devices that connect and extend beyond the white space of the data center. Our data center software suite includes flow network simulation to support the design and management of data center flow networks. This blog details the main benefits of our data center software’s flow network functionality and a few of its key features we think our readers will find useful.

Flow Network Functionality: Benefits

The flow network functionality enables users to analyze data center cooling delivery through pipes or ducts, such as chilled water, liquid cooling, or ducted air systems. A flow network represents components, such as cooling towers, chillers, pumps, pipes, ducts, and the IT load on a canvas as shown below.

The flow network offers rapid simulation capabilities to understand the performance of the cooling delivery, whether this is the chilled water system performance or liquid cooling to the IT. This can be achieved as either a steady-state snapshot or a time-based transient simulation. An example of a CDU delivering coolant to liquid-cooled IT is shown below.

Where Cadence Reality DC offers additional benefits is connecting components in the flow network to their 3D counterpart to co-simulate a 3D+ solution. Below is an example of a 3D chiller and its flow network counterpart.

When the flow network chiller is connected to the 3D chiller, air conditions are calculated from the 3D model, and the water conditions are calculated from the flow network. Both flow network and 3D models will co-simulate in a 3D+ solution to allow for the full system performance to be calculated. This approach can be used for any objects that require air and coolant properties for cooling performance, such as cooling towers, CRACs/CRAHs, heat exchangers, or air- and liquid-cooled IT.

Moving this a step forward, the new campus-level modeling allows multiple data halls to be connected together with the outside environment, allowing for the first full “chip-to-chiller” system-wide simulation. Below is an example of a chilled water system delivering cold water to two data halls.

In the above example, all 3D and flow network models co-simulate to connect the outside weather conditions to the performance of the cooling system and, in turn, the conditions inside each of the data halls. In short, the software can:

• Simulate large complex cooling systems in a fraction of the time compared to a 3D simulated model using a pure flow network model
• Use a 3D+ simulation that combines flow network modeling and 3D modeling to assess the interaction between the 3D white space and the flow network systems
• Use transient simulation to visualize the cooling system’s resilience by failing pumps, chillers, cooling towers, or fans

Flow Network Functionality: Specific Features

The software can simulate the heat transfer between multiple fluid/air streams and model cooling towers, both air- and water-cooled chillers, CRAHs, and liquid cooling applications. It can also simulate the combination of liquid cooling networks and air-side networks, flow network representation for simplified IT, and a range of components.

Users can also assess how long the system can maintain the required environment in the data center using flow network transient analysis. By failing components in the flow network, such as chillers, pumps, or fans, the software can simulate the transient failure performance of the entire data center. When performing a transient simulation, the results for each flow network object will be provided as time series curves in the property sheet. When connected to the 3D model, the impact of the failure can be shown on the data center white space to identify risk to IT thermal shutdown in cooling failure scenarios.

Leverage Flow Network Functionality to Get More from Your Data Center Software

There are so many moving parts to data center management. Incorporating the right data center software into your workflow can dramatically simplify your planning process. We continually build out our software to ensure users can manage more aspects of data center design and operations—like flow networks—within one platform.

Check out this blog post about our data network functionality, or fill out our free trial form to set up a software demo today.