Raised floors are provided with the perforate tiles which can be opened at any desired location

for air supply to the server racks. This precision air conditioning involves no duct work as the
floor is raised to accommodate conditioned air between the ground and the raised floor as shown
in Fig.3. Without adequate chilled air flow supplied from the perforated tiles, recirculation cells
above the racks are generated where the hot air exhausting from the rear of a rack passes over the
top of the rack and enters back into the front of the racks. In addition those racks at the ends
of rows experience hot air entering into the rack from exhaust of nearby racks.

A common problem occurs in computer rooms that have multiple, floor-mounted air
handling units with their own reheat and moisture addition system for humidity control. The
Units begin to “fight” each other. One unit is in humidification mode while one nearby may be
in dehumidification mode The solution is to allow the floor mounted units to provide only
sensible cooling while humidification/dehumidification is performed from a central location. The
raised floor technique has been found to provide better humidity control as shown in Fig.3.

Necessity of humidity in server rooms:

Humidity relates to the moisture content in a specific unit of air and the term relative humidity is
how we often define humidity levels. Relative humidity is the ratio of the amount of the water
vapor in the air compared to the maximum it could hold at the same temperature. In most
installations cold air is drawn in to mix with the internal circulation of air both to provide fresh
air intake to reduce any contamination problems within the room. This cold air has low moisture
content depending on how cold it is. Therefore, moisture must be added to maintain the
RH level of the room. In addition there is some loss of moisture in room from convection to
outside areas. Computer data centers should have vapor barriers to limit the loss of moisture, but
even with a vapor barrier some loss in moisture is inevitable.

Electrostatic discharge effects:

Relative humidity levels are important not only for ESD reasons but also for thermal comfort
health, condensation control, control of growth of pathogenic and allergenic organism, and
corrosion. ESD damage is through electrostatic induction. This occurs when an electrically
charged object is placed near a conductive object isolated from ground. The presence of the
charged object creates an electrostatic field that causes electrical charges on the surface of the
other object to redistribute. Even though the net electrostatic charge of the object has not
changed, it now has regions of excess positive and negative charges. An ESD event may occur
when the object comes into contact with a conductive path.
Humidity helps to reduce ESD in two ways:

1. As a conductor: when humidity levels are such that an invisible film of moisture can
form which can allow the electrons that accumulate to conduct and flow to the ground.
This is due to the grounding process, which allows the electrons to flow away rather than
accumulate.

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 2. As a lubricant: the moisture film reduces friction between moving bodies thereby
voltages can’t accumulate as fast on the surface.

Below a relative humidity of 50%, the failures increase exponentially with decreasing relative
humidity [1]. For example, at 5% RH, the number of failures is approximately 2.5 times that at
50% relative humidity.

Humidity control methods:

Several commercially available methods are available to maintain RH levels. They are,
1. Steam
2. Water Spray
3. Evaporative pan
To use steam to increase relative humidity can either be direct steam provided by a boiler or
steam to steam where the steam h m a boiler heats fresh water. This later method would
eliminate any concern with chemicals that may be used to treat boiler feed water. Water spray
can take various forms to inject water into the environment - compressed air or ultrasonic
transducers to atomize the water. Finally evaporative pan uses steam, hot water or electricity to
provide energy for heating the coils which in turn heats the water. Steam is recommended for
most applications.

Computer server room acoustics:

With the increased heat loads of computer equipment the air flow rates required to cool
this equipment has also increased. Of course, this increase in system air flow rates has had a
negative impact on the acoustical levels generated in the data center. Some measurements
comparing room air flow rates, room level heat fluxes and sound power levels are shown in
Fig.4.

Fig.4. Data center acoustical power

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