IML Publishes Its First Journal Paper on Data Center Thermal Management

Aug 19, 2026 · 1 min read

IML’s first journal paper on data center thermal management, “Co-Design Optimization for Data Center Cooling System via Digital Twin”, has been published in the ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities.

The study uses a Modelica digital twin of the Frontier liquid cooling plant and a full year of operating data to evaluate how coolant distribution units (CDUs) should be partitioned across cooling subloops. The optimized layout achieved 35.48% annual cooling energy savings in the study. Optimizing flow fractions also reduced the influence of system topology, suggesting that software changes can achieve most of the savings with existing hardware.

Congratulations to first author and master’s student Shrenik Jadhav. This research was supported by a Research Initiation & Development (RID) grant from the University of Michigan-Dearborn Office of Research.

Read the paper or view the original announcement on LinkedIn.

Zheng Liu
Authors
Zheng Liu
Assistant Professor
Zheng Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025. He received his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2019. His research bridges theoretical and applied aspects of AI in manufacturing and energy systems. He focused on physics-based modeling, physics-informed machine learning, and generative design for manufacturing and energy storage applications. He also evaluated the manufacturing processes through life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis, helping the team win $1M Department of Energy’s (DOE) inaugural American-Made Geothermal Lithium Extraction Prize. He has collaborated on multiple projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Future Manufacturing Research Grant (FMRG) program, as well as the Office of Naval Research (ONR). He also won the prestigious Prof. Avram Bar-Cohen Best Paper Award in the Data Centers Thermal Management track at 2026 IEEE ITherm. In addition, he served as a graduate fellow and STEM outreach coordinator at the NSF Engineering Research Center for Power Optimization for Electro-Thermal Systems (POETS). Zheng has received the Sharp Outstanding Graduate Student Award and the Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Graduate Student Award in recognition of his research contributions. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and 20 conference proceedings, and has served as the publication co-chair for the IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference. Through his work, he continues to push the frontiers of AI-driven innovation in manufacturing and energy systems.