Data centers house business-critical applications and information on servers that run 24 hours a day, generating extreme amounts of heat. Reliable, efficient HVAC systems are crucial to cool storage servers and eliminate the risk of damage caused by overheating. To ensure healthy operation of HVAC systems, regular system maintenance is essential.
HVAC systems maintain temperatures inside data centers by circulating cooling water or air. The coolant flows through chiller tubes, which often have spiral grooves inside of them. These inner grooves help ensure efficient heat transfer, but corrosion, pitting, and deposition tend to occur around the spiral lines. While straight chiller tubes are often inspected using eddy current (ECT) and ultrasonic testing (UT), the integrity of the inner grooving of the tubes is difficult to validate with those methods. Further complicating the inspection, many chiller tubes have a U-shape in the middle. The bottom curve of the U-shape is a vulnerable point subjected to the load of circulated fluids during system operation. Remote visual inspection (RVI) using a videoscope is the recommended method to inspect both the inner groove and the conditions of the U-shape.