Patent ID: 7995339

Claim:
A method of controlling a plurality of vent tiles positioned upstream of a plurality of racks, said method comprising: measuring mass flow rates of air supplied into a common space through a first vent tile and a second vent tile of the plurality of vent tiles, wherein a first rack and a second rack of the plurality of racks are to receive airflow from the common space; measuring mass flow rates of air received into each of the first and second racks at multiple mass flow rate settings of the first and second vent tiles; determining magnitudes of changes to the mass flow rates of air received into each of the first and second racks at the multiple mass flow rate settings of the first and second vent tiles; determining a respective vent tile family (VTF) of each of the racks, said VTF for each of the first and second racks including those vent tiles that are determined to cause the magnitude of changes to the mass flow rates of airflow received into each of the first and second racks to vary beyond a predetermined threshold in response to changes to the mass flow rate settings of the vent tiles; identifying a vent control family (VCF) from the vent tiles in the VTF, said VCF including those vent tiles in a VTF of a rack having an inlet condition that is outside of a predefined threshold; assigning weights to the vent tiles in the VTF according to the determined magnitudes of changes to the mass flow rates of air received into each of the first and second racks at the multiple mass flow rate settings of the first and second vent tiles; and controlling the vent tiles in the VCF based on the assigned weights of the vent tiles.