Flomerics, which specializes in the computer simulation of engineering design processes, today announced that APC (American Power Conversion) recently selected Flomerics’ Flovent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to develop the world’s first real-time cooling calculator for data center design. The calculator computes a cooling performance metric called the capture index that assesses the local airflow around each rack and evaluates cooling performance and the scalability of cooling architecture.

As data center cooling becomes more complicated and expensive due to the rapid rise in power densities of modern computing and communications systems, the ability to predict local temperature and airflow near equipment racks becomes critical. Running computer simulations of the airflow and heat transfer throughout the data center can provide a solution, but analyzing the results requires time and expertise. Through the use of Flomerics’ Flovent CFD software, APC developed a much simpler approach that enables the user to model a wide range of data center configurations and distill the results into simple algorithms that predict cooling performance for typical data center layouts. APC engineers calculated the capture indices for many thousands of rack and cooler layouts from Flovent simulations. Based on these results, APC developed mathematical models that predict the capture index based on data center layout without the need for a full 3D airflow simulation. These models were then incorporated into APC software tools developed for designing and managing data centers such as InfraStruXure Designer and Capacity Manager.