journal article·2025-07-09Open access

An Intelligent Thermal Management Strategy for a Data Center Prototype Based on Digital Twin Technology

Hang Yuan, Zeyu Zhang, Duobing Yang, Tianyou Xue, Dongsheng Wen, Guice Yao

Applied Sciences· Volume 15· Issue 14

Abstract

Data centers contribute to roughly 1% of global energy consumption and 0.3% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. The cooling system alone constitutes a substantial 50% of total energy consumption for data centers. Lowering Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of data center cooling systems from 2.2 to 1.4, or even below, is one of the critical issues in this thermal management area. In this work, a digital twin system of an Intelligent Data Center (IDC) prototype is designed to be capable of real-time monitoring the temperature distribution. Moreover, aiming to lower PUE, Deep Q-Learning Network (DQN) is further established to make optimization decisions of thermal management during cooling down of the local hotspot. The entire process of thermal management for IDC can be real-time visualized in Unity, forming the virtual entity of data center prototype, which provides an intelligent solution for sustainable data center operation.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Digital Transformation in Industry

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

School of Aeronautics Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

China Communications Information & Technology Group Co., Ltd., Beijing 101399, China

School of General Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

Institute of Thermodynamics, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany

Funding

China Communications Information & Technology Group Co., Ltd.

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