*Sorry everyone for the very wordy question.
I am trying to write up a method to accurately measure the airflow through the inlet and various outlets on one of our servers in order to measure the heat output from the server partitions/cards. The boss wants to know the rate of heat production from each card, the current airflow provided to each card, and what the airflow actually should be to keep the cards running at a certain temperature. The server is partitioned into three sections and the outlet vents look similar to these:
I have purchased a TSI 9565 velocity meter that comes with a hot wire anemometer and a small pitot tube that measures down to 0.15m/s. I plan on using the pitot tube attachment to measure the air velocity, but my concern is that the velocity will vary depending on where on the vent I take it from, so I won't just be able to average it. The problem server is on site and the technician has limited time to access the server, which means he will only be able to take one measurement at each vent. We do have an exact copy of the server setup here in the main office, but the rack is quite different which means the airflow going into each server will be different.
However, I was thinking that because the server setups are the same, maybe the ratios between the velocities for each vent would also be the same. I don't have any justification for this, but if it is roughly true, I could record each individual velocity reading from each vent perforation on the server here in the office, where I have plenty of time to do it. Then I could specific a certain spot on each vent for the technician on site to take a single velocity reading from and find the factor of difference between that server and the office server. From there I could multiply all the velocity values for that vent that I recorded on the office server. It's a bit hard to explain so I've included a quick example.
My question is, is my assumption that the servers would have the same relative velocity profiles valid? If not, what would be an accurate way to measure the airflow through each vent?