Effectiveness-weighted control method for a cooling system

• US 9,213,343 B2
• Filed: 03/04/2013
• Issued: 12/15/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2012
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Campbell, Levi A., Chu, Richard C., David, Milnes P., Ellsworth, Michael J. Jr., Iyengar, Madhusudan K., Schmidt, Roger R., Simons, Robert E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lo, Kenneth M
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wellman, Geoffrey
• Application Number:
  US13/783,618
• Publication Number:
  US 20140163767A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,016 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 15/02 electric
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 23/1932 to control the temperature of a plurality of spaces
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 7/2079 within rooms for removing heat from cabinets
• CPC Class Codes: H05K 7/20836 Thermal management, e.g. server temperature control

Abstract

Energy efficient control of cooling system cooling of an electronic system is provided based, in part, on weighted cooling effectiveness of the components. The control includes automatically determining speed control settings for multiple adjustable cooling components of the cooling system. The automatically determining is based, at least in part, on weighted cooling effectiveness of the components of the cooling system, and the determining operates to limit power consumption of at least the cooling system, while ensuring that a target temperature associated with at least one of the cooling system or the electronic system is within a desired range by provisioning, based on the weighted cooling effectiveness, a desired target temperature change among the multiple adjustable cooling components of the cooling system. The provisioning includes provisioning applied power to the multiple adjustable cooling components via, at least in part, the determined control settings.

Claims

1. A method of controlling cooling of an electronic system, the method comprising:

automatically determining control settings for multiple adjustable cooling components of a cooling system cooling the electronic system, the automatically determining control settings being based, at least in part, on weighted cooling effectiveness of the multiple adjustable cooling components of the cooling system, the automatically determining control settings providing determined control settings;

wherein the automatically determining control settings operates to limit power consumption of at least the cooling system, while ensuring that a target temperature associated with at least one of the cooling system or the electronic system is within a desired range by provisioning, based at least in part, on the weighted cooling effectiveness, a desired target temperature change among the multiple adjustable cooling components, the provisioning including provisioning applied power to the multiple adjustable cooling components via, at least in part, the determined control settings;

wherein the automatically determining control settings comprises automatically determining speed control settings for the multiple adjustable cooling components of the cooling system to provide determined speed settings, each adjustable cooling component n of the multiple adjustable cooling components comprising an adjustable speed control, and wherein the provisioning includes provisioning the applied power to the multiple different cooling components via, at least in part, the determined speed settings;

wherein the automatically determining control settings further comprises ascertaining the desired target temperature change for a particular time to facilitate maintaining the target temperature within the desired range, and obtaining a weighting ratio of cooling effectiveness of adjustable cooling component n to a total cooling effectiveness of the multiple adjustable cooling components, and a proportional gain for adjustable cooling component n of the multiple adjustable cooling components and, based at least in part thereon, determining the speed control settings for the multiple adjustable cooling components of the cooling system to achieve the desired target temperature change; and

wherein determining the speed control setting for adjustable cooling component n of the multiple. adjustable cooling components comprises determining a change in speed control setting for adjustable cooling component n, the change in speed control setting for adjustable cooling component being determined as;

2. The method of claim 1, wherein cooling effectiveness of a cooling component n of the multiple adjustable cooling components comprises a ratio of a range of achievable target temperature changes to a range of power consumption of the cooling component n.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ascertaining the desired target temperature change is dynamically determined, and wherein the obtaining the weighting ratio for cooling component n of the multiple adjustable cooling components comprises predetermining the weighting ratio by employing a single range approximation between a set minimum speed control setting and a set maximum speed control setting, or multiple sub-range approximations between the set minimum speed control setting and the set maximum speed control setting.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the ascertaining the desired target temperature change is dynamically determined, and wherein the obtaining the weighting ratio for cooling component n of the multiple adjustable cooling components is dynamically derived at runtime over the range of speed control settings of adjustable cooling component n.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining the weighting ratio comprises obtaining a weighting ratio of cooling effectiveness of cooling component n to total power consumption of the multiple adjustable cooling components, plus power consumption of the electronic system being cooled by the cooling system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the proportional gain for adjustable cooling component n is, in part, a function of a measured time constant (τ

_n) associated with changes in cooling component n.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least two cooling components of the multiple adjustable cooling components have different respective values of weighted cooling effectiveness and are different types of cooling components.