Flow Resistance Due to Stanchions Now Included in ITA CFD!

[jvangilder]

Stanchions (sometimes also called supports, posts, jacks, pedestals, etc.) are the structural members which support a raised floor above the cement slab. They're fairly small but, collectively, they add enough flow resistance to affect plenum airflow patterns in many cases.

We now have three options for stanchions: "none", "round", and "square". While the width/diameter of stanchions varies a little in real data centers, the resulting differences in flow resistance are modest - so this parameter is not needed as an input. To be computationally efficient, stanchions are modeled as a distributed resistance - as opposed to explicitly modeling every individual stanchion. As a nice bonus, in addition to improving accuracy, the inclusion of stanchion flow resistance actually makes calculations more robust and sometimes faster.

If you are interested in more details, the ITA CFD implementation follows the method outlined in the attached paper.