Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. GenOptr – A Generic Optimization Program

The potential offered by computer simulation is of-ten not realized: Due to the interaction of system vari-ables, simulation users rarely know how to choose input parameter settings that lead to optimal perfor-mance of a given system. Thus, a program called GenOptr that automatically determines optimal pa-rameter settings has been developed. GenOpt is a generic optimization program. It min-imizes an objective function with respect to multi-ple parameters. The objective function is evaluated by a simulation program that is iteratively called by GenOpt. In thermal building simulation – which is the main target of GenOpt – the simulation pro-gram usually has text-based I/O. The paper show