Data center investments are growing rapidly across the world. However, when sufficient climatological and meteorological analysis is not carried out at the early design stage, this growth also brings serious vulnerabilities.
Today, the success of a data center is measured not only by energy efficiency, but also by climate resilience.
Increasing heatwaves, changing wind regimes, and environmental effects directly impact the entire system, from cooling infrastructure to operational continuity.
For this reason, design decisions must be supported by the following data:
- Regional climate characteristics
- Prevailing wind directions
- Peak temperature values and heatwave projections
- Topography, surrounding urban development, and urban heat island effects
In addition to this, the design is further strengthened through CFD analyses.
Especially in complex data center sites, analyses based on wind directions and peak temperature values defined in accordance with ASHRAE standards are of great importance. In this way, the placement of cooling units can be evaluated in detail; intake temperatures of the units, their bypass ratios with one another or with other equipment, and the interactions between outdoor units can all be examined at the design stage.
At this point, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations become a critical tool.
Through CFD, the performance of cooling units, generators, and airflow systems under current and future thermal stress conditions can be analyzed. This makes it possible to clearly identify the extent to which outdoor units affect one another, whether hot exhaust air is being re-entrained into the intake, and whether acceptable limits are being exceeded.
Neglecting this step does not only increase energy costs; it also raises the risk of systemic failure. Considering the critical role of data centers in finance, government, and digital infrastructure, the reputational damage that may arise is often far more costly than the initial capital savings achieved.
In the video below, we defined the site-specific meteorological data from the completed analysis as an input for the CFD study. Under the effect of a 3.5 m/s wind blowing from the west, the locations where Generator Radiators, Generator exhausts, and Chiller units re-ingest the air they discharge can be observed.
As a result, today’s data centers must accommodate not only data, but also resilience.
In complex data centers, external flow analysis is not a preference – it is a necessity.↑
