As in so many other areas of our lives, COVID-19 has created new challenges within the architecture and design space, with clients now regularly requesting COVID-secure design.
Computational Fluid Dynamics provides the potential for a detailed and accurate insight into the operation of the data centre, throughout the design process.This is incredibly useful to highlight any risks within the design, but it also allows for multiple design options to be tested at an early design stage, highlighting potential opportunities for lowering energy consumption and carbon emission.
These strategies can include reducing storey heights, optimising Hot Aisle Containment (HAC) required and reducing the clearances between data racks leading to a smaller data hall footprint.. At Bryden Wood, we advocate for a broader application of CFD in optimising and innovating data centre design, aiming for a more sustainable future within the industry.. Data Hall Design Optimisation.CFD Analysis of a Switch Room.CFD is traditionally used within data halls and Electrical Plantrooms to assess IT or Electrical Plants (e.g.
UPS), both in normal running (N+X) and failure scenarios (N) and to ensure optimal cooling distribution and equipment performance.By integrating CFD early in the design process we can explore design options available to improve optimisation from both an economic and carbon standpoint..
Embodied carbon for a recent DC project.. MEP systems, especially cooling and power distribution, account for a considerable proportion of a data centre’s embodied carbon.
By leveraging CFD, we can effectively minimise this impact by optimising cooling efficiency.Thankfully, due to technological advancement, we now have the ability to modernise planning, and the emphasis on digitisation in the planning white paper provides high-level support.
At Bryden Wood, our Creative Technologies team has been working alongside the London Borough of Southwark, the Centre for Digital Built Britain and 3D Repo to advance the issue..The quest to digitise the planning system involves a complex ecosystem of different industry players coming together.
Jack Ricketts, a planner at London Borough of Southwark, doesn’t want to see the planning process holding others back.While working on projects funded by the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Ricketts sought to avoid the possibility of duplicating work, or becoming an accidental blocker to the process.
(Editor: Quiet Irons)