{"id":276082,"date":"2026-01-09T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/276082\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T15:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T15:00:09","slug":"ancient-board-game-inspires-artificial-intelligence-to-tackle-engine-and-data-centre-overheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/276082\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient board game inspires artificial intelligence to tackle engine and data centre overheating"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team of researchers has taken inspiration from the ancient Chinese board game Go to train an AI designed to provide optimal cooling strategies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team set out to analyse and predict the most effective method of spray cooling, which could keep electrical grids and data centres operating amid surging demand.<\/p>\n

The engineers also claim their research could lead to more effective ways of keeping engines, individual computers, and turbines from overheating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taking inspiration from AlphaGo<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the scientists behind the\u00a0research, associate professor Jiangtao Cheng at Virginia Tech, had played Go since high school. Invented more than 2,500 years ago, the two-player strategy board game requires the winner to ‘control’ the most territory on the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From 2014, Google\u2019s AlphaGo allowed human players to take on an AI-powered competitor. Using machine learning, AlphaGo was able to refine its approach the more it played, allowing it to beat a professional human player within a year. Since then, it has\u00a0taken on<\/a>\u00a0and beaten the world\u2019s top players.<\/p>\n

Cheng decided to take on AlphaGo himself, a\u00a0press statement<\/a>\u00a0has revealed. Though he lost continuously, the experience, surprisingly, gave him the idea to build a strategy for cooling hot machinery.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo is a game of interconnected dynamics, just as a spray cooling system is a network of interacting parameters,\u201d said Cheng. \u201cSuccess \u2013 whether winning the game or optimising the system \u2013requires a holistic understanding of the network and careful management of its interactions, a task that can be greatly enhanced with AI by analysing complex patterns, predicting outcomes, and guiding optimal strategies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Using AI to analyse water droplets<\/strong><\/p>\n

The team, which published their findings in\u00a0a paper<\/a>\u00a0in the journal\u00a0Artificial Intelligence Review, set out to present a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of spray cooling.<\/p>\n

The key is water droplets. When they hit a hot object\u2019s surface, each tiny droplet evaporates, carrying away some of the heat, helping to regulate the surface temperature and cool down the object.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way water changes as it encounters heat is different with droplets,\u201d said Lori, the study\u2019s first author. \u201cDroplets pick the heat up more quickly and carry it away because they boil and evaporate so quickly. Because of this fast turnaround cycle, droplets allow a much more effective approach to temperature control.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, analysing individual droplets is a tricky task that poses many questions. For instance, what is the best droplet size to effectively tackle heat? What type of spray nozzle is most effective at producing these droplet sizes? Should alternatives to water \u2013 solvents, lubricants, or engineered mixes \u2013\u00a0be considered?<\/p>\n

Inspired by AlphaGo, the researchers used machine learning to analyse publicly shared data from 25 existing studies on water droplets. This allowed them to evaluate the basic properties of liquids, how these form droplets, and how they absorb heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though AI always wins on the Go board, I never felt frustrated but learnt to take advantage of AI to tackle challenges and dilemmas in real life, such as thermal management of high power-density electronics,\u201d said Cheng.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy bridging thermo-fluid science with AI, we\u2019re not just improving spray cooling,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re actually redefining how we understand and design the thermal systems of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of researchers has taken inspiration from the ancient Chinese board game Go to train an AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-276082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115865742465620454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}