A cold aisle in a CoolSim model of a data center hall: cool supply air rising from the floor tiles, warm exhaust running back over the ceiling to the cooling units
CFD for Data Centers

Accessible CFD modeling for Data Centers and AEC.

Optimize data center cooling with CoolSim — an easy-to-use yet powerful CFD tool that cuts energy costs and prevents hot spots. Build a model free in your browser, then run it with a 30-day trial.

Request a 30-day trial Try the Model Builder Learn more
Ansys Technology Partner
Trusted by data center builders worldwide
Rogers Telios PC HED Modular Data Centers
External flow

Step outside the hall.

Wind and rooftop plant decide how well a campus rejects heat. Put chillers, condensing units and generators on the roof or in the equipment yard, set the wind direction and the design-day temperature, and see where the warm discharge goes before anything is installed.

Model a campus How it works
Looking along the gap between two buildings of a data center campus: a row of generators beside one building, banks of condensing units on the neighboring roof, orange lines of warm air drifting across both and blue wind lines beyond
CoolSim’s demo campus on a 110 °F day, between two of its buildings. Blue is the wind; orange is warm exhaust from the equipment.
Wind
35 mph
from the south-west
Design day
110 °F
ambient air
Mesh
9.5 M
cells, Ansys Icepak
Solver
Fluent
Ansys, in our cloud
How it works

You build the model. We run the CFD.

Meshing, solving and reporting happen on our cluster, watched by engineers who model data centers every day.

The CoolSim model builder with an example data center open: an equipment toolbar (CRAC, Rack, HDU, Tile, Duct, Diffuser), the model tree, a 3D view of the hall and the room settings
The model builder with the Demo Data Center example open.
01 Build

Model the room in the terms you already use.

Drag racks, CRACs, floor tiles, ducts and diffusers into a 3D model of the hall on your PC. Libraries of common equipment are built in, and anything you make can be saved for the next project.

  • Raised and non-raised floors
  • Containment
  • Racks to the 1U
A cooling unit at the end of a row of racks in a CoolSim model of a data center hall, with orange airflow lines running along the ceiling into its top
A cooling unit at the end of a row. Orange is warm air running back along the ceiling into the top of the unit.
02 Solve

Ansys solvers, without the Ansys license.

Submit the model and it is meshed with Ansys Icepak and solved with Ansys Fluent on our cloud cluster: no annual license, no workstation to buy. Every job is monitored, and if one fails, a support engineer finds the cause, fixes it and resubmits.

  • Icepak mesh
  • Fluent solve
  • Up to 4 CRAC scenarios per job
A page of the CoolSim Summary Report: an isometric map of the hall with every rack colored by the average temperature of the air it takes in, the coldest and warmest racks labeled, and a legend counting racks in each ASHRAE band
An example hall: 155 of 234 racks take in air colder than the recommended 64.4 °F, and none is warmer than the 80.6 °F maximum.
03 Report

A report your client can read.

Every job returns a Data Center Output Report automatically: airflow and temperature for every piece of equipment in the room, measured against the ASHRAE ranges, with graphics and animations. Share it with a link, or export it to PowerPoint or Excel.

  • Every rack on one map
  • Shareable link
  • PowerPoint and Excel
Open a sample report
Who it’s for

For the teams who run halls, and the teams who design them.

For Colocation / Data Center Operators

For Colocation / Data Center Operators

Check that cooling keeps up as IT load grows, find your most critical cooling units, and plan for a unit failure before it happens.

Read more
For Design / Build Engineers

For Design / Build Engineers

Compare containment, floor and cooling options before anything is built, and give your client a report that shows why one design wins.

Read more
Consulting

When the problem is bigger than the hall.

Our CFD engineers build and run the models for you, from a single campus study to a scenario nobody has a template for.

Discuss your modeling challenge
  • External flow

    Campus-scale wind studies

    Wind across a whole campus: building layout, and where generators and chillers go.

  • Transient

    Cooling failure over time

    Rack temperatures through a cooling interruption: where hot spots form and how long recovery takes.

  • Dispersion

    Exhaust and NOx dispersion

    Generator, boiler and truck exhaust at your air intakes, against EPA limits: where to put the intake, and how tall the stack.

  • Custom

    Beyond the data center

    Clean rooms, operating rooms, paint booths, pharmaceutical storage. Tell us the scenario.

Model your next hall before you build it.

Start with a 30-day trial. Our Quick-Start program pairs your first project with a CoolSim expert.

Request a 30-day trial Read the overview
2005
CoolSim developed at Fluent, Inc. (now Ansys)
2008
Applied Math Modeling founded
DCEP
Certified support engineers
Ansys
Technology Partner