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Hi, I am trying to use Genopt to optimize a BES model. I have gone through M. Kummert's documentation on the way around to use GenOpt with Type56. I am still not clear about how we can change the windows or may be the slope of slanted roofs and I was wondering if there was any documentation available on similar operation. Thanks.
When planning an optimization exercise, the first step is to determine how the thing you want to optimize is modeled in the software and then figure out how to apply optimization techniques to that process.
In the Type56 building model, detailed specifications of the window thermal and optical properties for all of the windows used in the building model are added into the window pool for the model. The actual windows used in the model are determined by the winID for each of the individual windows in the model. These winID numbers can be set to be an input to the Type56 model rather than a constant value set in TRNBuild. If you make all of the windows in your model that you wish to optimize to have their winIDs as inputs you can then set the winID values by using equations in the TRNSYS input file. Once you have this working in your input file you can use TRNOpt to set the value of the equation. But you need to be very careful since the winID numbers will be discrete values and not a continuous function. Thus you need to use a parametric run optimization that limits the values to the winID values in your building model window pool.
For a roof slope things can be more complicated. If you are using the detailed radiation mode in your zone with the roof then the detailed geometry of the zone would need to change with the changing roof slope. A study like this would be most easily accomplished using the TRNLizard plugin for Rhino. Otherwise, if you are using the standard radiation method and are willing to ignore the error of the roof area changing with the change in slope, you can make you roof orientation in TRNBuild to be input from an external component and set the surface slope and azimuth properties in your weather data reader to produce the incident solar radiation for your roof surface. These solar outputs will need to be connected to your Type56 building model. You can set the slope parameter in the weather data reader to be a variable name that can be set by an equation. Once you have this working, you can use TRNOpt to optimize the slope value.
Hi Tim, Thank you so much for your reply. I tried it out and it worked, I am ignoring the error that is being produced by not changing the surface area of the roof along with changing roof slope. However I am interested to make it more precise so I am interested to know how I can get it done in Rhino with TRNLIZARD. can you refer me to any relevant documentation/ publication? Thanks.
TimMcDowell 11/05/2023 5:46 pm
@tm-abir-ahsan You can find more information about TRNLizard at https://trnsys.de/en/addons-en.
I don't know of any papers that directly discuss optimization with TRNLizard, but there have been many papers on building optimization using Rhino. You can search the IBPSA publication archive for relevant papers at https://publications.ibpsa.org/.
