Case Study: Meta achieves 50% lower hard drive vibrations with Hexagon aeroacoustic simulation

Optimising storage server chassis design with aeroacoustic simulations

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, faced a significant challenge in optimizing its data center storage servers. Hard drives are highly sensitive to vibrations from multiple sources, including cooling fans and the drives themselves, which can cause performance degradation and failure. To move from a slow, prototype-heavy testing process to a faster, predictive approach, Meta partnered with vendor Hexagon to employ aeroacoustic simulation using their scFLOW and Actran software to model and mitigate these vibrations.

Hexagon's solution involved a multidisciplinary optimization process that first validated their simulation models against physical measurements. A key innovation was the introduction of unique vertical channels between the hard drives to provide visco-thermal damping, which significantly reduced acoustic pressure. By leveraging a machine learning model to speed up the optimization, Hexagon helped Meta achieve a 50% reduction in hard drive vibrations while maintaining thermal performance, a result that would have been impossible to find through physical testing alone.

Meta

Kanwardeep Bhachu

Optimisation Engineer