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Real-world application

Enable liquid cooling

Support high-density AI racks while maintaining reliable, efficient operations. We help you design liquid cooling infrastructure and integrate it with your data center. Our digital twin simulations give you greater visibility into performance throughout the lifecycle.

Smart Data Centers Cooling Data Centers

Challenge

Higher-density AI deployments create intense thermal loads, where data centers need to integrate new cooling technologies while maintaining uptime and energy efficiency. Liquid cooling helps you manage these thermal loads, but it also introduces additional infrastructure that adds complexity to system design, commissioning and day-to-day operations.

Solution

We help data centers design, integrate and optimize liquid cooling infrastructure. Together with cooling equipment manufacturers and system integrators, we combine digital twin simulation, automation and hydronic components into one coordinated system. This gives you greater visibility and control to maintain reliable thermal performance and improve efficiency throughout operations.

Test scenarios virtually

As cooling systems become more complex, simulation helps you understand how their components interact. With a digital twin, you can test different liquid cooling configurations in a virtual environment before committing to physical equipment. Compare cooling behavior under different site and workload conditions, test what-if scenarios and evaluate equipment specifications. This helps you validate design choices, optimize equipment sizing and reduce engineering risk before deployment.

Screen shot of a liquid cooling simulation in a data center
Isometric data center cooling layout showing server racks, CDU, RDHx, chiller, cooling tower, and piping.

Optimize hydronic control

AI workloads can shift in seconds, triggering constant fluctuations in flow, pressure and temperature that challenge cooling efficiency. Selecting the right hydronic components – including valves, actuators and sensors – helps regulate these conditions, dynamically balance cooling capacity across the system. Intelligent hydronic components support stable thermal conditions and reliable operation as workloads evolve.

Orchestrate your cooling infrastructure

Many AI data centers use air and liquid cooling systems side by side. Each technology plays a different role for thermal management, but both need to work as part of the same cooling architecture. This architecture also needs to interact with the wider data center infrastructure, where power, automation and cooling respond together to changing AI workloads. A unified control layer helps orchestrate these systems. The digital twin provides a separate workspace that brings simulation models, 3D facility models and operational data together in one digital environment.

Infographic visualize the connecting between cooling, power and compute

Validate designs before deployment

Test cooling concepts and design scenarios with digital twin simulations before equipment is built and installed. This helps you understand system dynamics, devise smart control strategies and reduce engineering risk.

Accelerate deployment

Reduce time from design to operation with validated reference architectures and digital twin simulation. De-risk commissioning, reduce on-site effort and bring new cooling capacity online faster.

Maintain reliable thermal performance

Monitor and control cooling infrastructure as AI workloads change. Integrated automation and hydronic components support system-wide thermal management to maintain stable conditions.

Scale with standardized architecture

Build on modular, standardized automation that adapts as rack densities, cooling technologies and operational requirements evolve. Expand liquid cooling in phases without redesigning your control architecture.

Leverage a strong partner ecosystem

Together with cooling equipment manufacturers and system integrators, we support complex, high-value deployments and help integrate proven technologies into tailored cooling architectures.

How to get started

Whether you're planning a new AI data center or expanding an existing facility, we help you adopt liquid cooling through a structured approach - from initial design to phased deployment and operations.

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Assess cooling requirements

Evaluate rack densities, cooling technologies, heat rejection, operational goals and future capacity plans. We help define a cooling architecture that fits your data center strategy and integrates with your existing infrastructure where needed.

Person standing at a wall display with colored grid elements and a blue square symbol in the lower corner.

Design and validate the solution

Design the cooling architecture and validate its performance before deployment. Reference architectures and physics-based simulation with Simcenter, brought together in Digital Twin Composer, help evaluate cooling concepts, reduce design risk and support informed engineering decisions.

Construction worker wearing a hard hat using a handheld device beside a vertical equipment panel.

Integrate and deploy

Collaborate with manufacturers and our experts to connect automation and hydronic systems. Solutions like Desigo, SIMATIC and Climatix help establish a unified control layer with reliable monitoring and precise thermal control across your infrastructure.

Person seated at a desk viewing a computer monitor displaying a bar chart.

Monitor and improve

Monitor cooling performance, detect and isolate leaks, respond to changing AI workloads and optimize operation over time. Digital twins, lifecycle services and performance insights help keep your cooling infrastructure operating efficiently as your data center evolves.

Case study

Handle 50% higher power densities in AI chips

Liquid-cooling assembly with finned heat sinks, pipes, and a circuit board shown in a color-coded thermal view.

Company: Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)
Location
: Hsinchu, Taiwan
Solutions
: Simcenter STAR-CCM+

To accelerate the development of liquid cooling technologies for AI applications, ITRI used Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to simulate and validate cooling designs before physical testing. Advanced CFD simulations reduced iterative prototyping, optimized cooling performance and minimized engineering risk. The optimized design enabled AI chips to handle 50% higher power densities, demonstrating the value of digital twin simulation for liquid cooling design.

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