ZT Systems

ZT Systems used FloTHERM thermal simulation software to evaluate the system's design. The simulation showed that hot air was re-circulating from the inside the chassis back to the intake plenum of a key fan.

“Thermal simulation provides enormous advantages in bringing a new product to market because it helps us visualize airflow and temperature throughout the entire design space and gives us the ability to quickly evaluate the performance of alternative designs.”

ZT Systems recently introduced a rack-mounted server that dissipates 300 Watts in a very low 1U profile. In addition to ensuring that the processors, memory, hard drives, and other critical components met manufacturers’ thermal design specifications, this system posed an additional design challenge in that the air reaching the RAID card’s Battery Backup Unit (BBU), which was towards the back of the system, had to be held to 45oC in ambient conditions of 35oC. Testing of the initial prototypes showed that the temperature of air approaching the battery backup unit was 53oC, hence 8oC over the battery cell manufacturer’s specifications.

ZT Systems used FloTHERM thermal simulation software to evaluate the system’s design. The simulation showed that hot air was re-circulating from the inside the chassis back to the intake plenum of a key fan. ZT Systems evaluated several software prototypes and solved the problem by eliminating the recirculation with minimal design changes. The new design saved money by avoiding the need for custom components.

Tests on this prototype matched the results shown in the simulation. The temperature of all dissipating components was well within specified limits.

ZT Systems used FloTHERM thermal simulation software to evaluate the system’s design. The simulation showed that hot air was re-circulating from the inside the chassis back to the intake plenum of a key fan.

“We use FloTHERM because it is very effective in assisting us in optimizing our designs and minimizing the power consumption of our servers, while meeting the thermal specifications in a datacenter and reducing the cost.”