MANIPULATING ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS IN AN INFRASTRUCTURE

• US 20110106314A1
• Filed: 10/30/2009
• Published: 05/05/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Fellx, Carlos J., Bash, Cullen E., Beitelmal, Abdlmonem, McReynolds, Alan A., Wang, Zhikui, Hoover, Christopher Edward
• Granted Patent: US 8,639,651 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/276
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 7/20836 Thermal management, e.g. server temperature control

Abstract

In a method for manipulating environmental conditions in an infrastructure containing one or more adaptive vent tiles, correlations between opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and an environmental condition at one or more heat dissipating devices are identified. In addition, one or more environmental conditions at locations proximate to or within the one or more heat dissipating devices are received and errors between the received one or more environmental conditions and one or more reference environmental conditions are identified. Moreover, opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles are determined based upon the identified correlations and errors.

Claims

1. A method for manipulating environmental conditions in an infrastructure containing one or more adaptive vent tiles, said method comprising:

in a computing device, identifying correlations between opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and an environmental condition at one or more heat dissipating devices;

receiving one or more environmental conditions at locations proximate to or within the one or more heat dissipating devices;

identifying errors between the received one or more environmental conditions and one or more reference environmental conditions; and

determining opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles based upon the identified correlations and errors.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the one or more adaptive vent tiles comprise one or more actuators for varying the opening levels, said method further comprising:

controlling the one or more actuators to vary the opening levels be one or more adaptive vent tiles to attain the determined opening levels in the one or more adaptive vent tiles.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein identifying the correlations further comprises modeling the correlations.

4. The method according to claim 3, further comprising:

collecting one or more environmental conditions at locations proximate to or within the one or more heat dissipating devices responsive to multiple opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles; and

wherein modeling the correlations further comprises modeling the correlations from the collected one or more environmental conditions.

5. The method according to claim 3, wherein modeling the correlations further comprises implementing a computational fluid dynamics tool to model the correlations.

6. The method according to claim 3, wherein modeling the correlations further comprises modeling the correlations as one of steady-state and dynamic models.

7. The method according to claim 3, wherein modeling the correlations further comprises modeling the correlations through one of an offline and an online operation.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein identifying the correlations further comprises identifying one or both of quantitative and qualitative correlations between the opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and the environmental condition at the one or more heat dissipating devices.

9. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether the identified correlations between opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and an environmental condition at the one or more heat dissipating devices require modification; and

modifying the correlations between the opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and an environmental condition at the one or more heat dissipating devices in response to a determination that the identified correlations require modification.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining the opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles further comprises determining the opening levels that minimize cooling resource utilization in the infrastructure while meeting predefined environmental condition thresholds.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining the opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles further comprises determining the opening levels that minimize environmental differences across a plurality of the heat dissipating devices.

12. A controller for manipulating environmental conditions in an infrastructure containing one or more adaptive vent tiles, said controller comprising:

a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) controller module configured to receive a model that identifies correlations between the opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent is tiles and an environmental condition at or in one or more heat dissipating devices, to receive a plurality of environmental conditions at locations proximate to or within the one or more heat dissipating devices, and to determine opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles based upon the model and errors between the collected environmental condition information and one or more reference environmental conditions; and

an output module configured to output the determined opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles.

13. The controller according to claim 12, further comprising:

a model estimator module configured to identify correlations between opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and environmental conditions at the one or more heat dissipating devices to generate the model.

14. The controller according to claim 13 wherein the model estimator module is configured to identify the correlations at least one of online using recursive algorithms and offline using historical information.

15. The controller according to claim 13, wherein the model estimator module is configured to model the correlations using detected environmental condition information.

16. The controller according to claim 13, wherein the model estimator module is configured to model the correlations through implementation of a computational fluid dynamics tool.

17. The controller according to claim 13, wherein the model estimator module is configured to model the correlations as one of a steady-state model and a dynamic model.

18. The controller according to claim 12, wherein the MIMO controller module is configured to determine the opening levels for the one or more of adaptive vent tiles that minimize cooling resource utilization while meeting predefined environmental condition thresholds.

19. The controller according to claim 12, wherein the MIMO controller module is configured to determine the opening levels for the one or more of adaptive vent tiles that minimize environmental differences across a plurality of the heat dissipating devices.

20. A computer readable storage medium on which is embedded one or more computer programs, said one or more computer programs implementing a method for manipulating environmental conditions in an infrastructure containing one or more adaptive vent tiles, said one or more computer programs comprising a set of instructions for:

identifying correlations between opening levels of the one or more adaptive vent tiles and an environmental condition at one or more heat dissipating devices;

receiving one or more environmental conditions at locations proximate to or within the one or more heat dissipating devices;

identifying errors between the received one or more environmental conditions and one or more reference environmental conditions; and

determining opening levels for the one or more adaptive vent tiles based upon the identified correlations and errors.