Experimental evaluation of a thermal contact liquid cooling system for server electronics

Abstract This paper presents the outcomes of a research project aimed at designing and experimentally evaluating a thermal contact liquid cooling system for military applications. The proposed system replaces fluidic connectors found in conventional water cooling systems with a thermal contact heat exchanger. This approach enhances reliability by eliminating leakage risks; however, it also undermines thermal performance by adding thermally resistive heat transfer interfaces. Experiments were conducted to quantify the downgraded thermal performance and to establish whether it is a viable trade-off for enhanced reliability. An experimental setup was constructed in order to simulate heat generation by a single processor. Results showed that the proposed system requires inlet water as warm as 53.2 °C at a maximum heat load of 300 W. For comparison, it was also shown that the proposed thermal contact water cooling system would require 43% more energy than a conventional water cooling system if operating at ambient temperatures sufficiently higher than 50 °C.