The TRNSYS Experience Seminar was launched for the first time in 2015 and held at the University of Lorraine. The background of the conference was the concern to bring together and network the users of the building and plant simulation software TRNSYS. The second edition of the English-language event took place on 25 and 26 February 2016 in the Rotunda of the TU Kaiserslautern.
The approximately 70 participants, who had traveled from five countries - in addition to the neighboring countries of the Greater Region (B, F, L) also from Italy - not only awaited the bright February sun and a rich catering, provided by students of the study program Facility Management, but also very diverse and forward-looking presentations. While TRNSYS was originally developed for the calculation of solar thermal systems and is today one of the most common software packages in the field of building simulation, the presentations from practice and research also showed new areas of application. These include co-simulation and coupling to other numerical tools, as well as use in "hardware-in-the-loop" procedures.
From residential buildings to spaceships
Of the presentations, about one-third dealt with issues of energy efficiency in residential and office buildings; a large number of presentations addressed the modeling of complex plant systems. A special "brainteaser" was the thermal calculation of a spaceship in space using the methods of classical building simulation: How is convection in space modeled in the absence of gravity, and what temperatures are applied to the long-wave radiation exchange of the outer wall? Even if this extraterrestrial excursion with TRNSYS will remain the exception, the one and a half days of the conference were able to show how wide the range of application of this powerful software tool is.
Workshop for students of the University of the Greater Region
As an innovation compared to the previous year, a workshop for students of the Greater Region was offered after the event, where they could get a first "hands-on" experience with building simulation. About 30 students from the TU Kaiserslautern as well as from the Universities of Lorraine, Luxembourg and Liège and the University of Trier took up the offer of a free introduction to the software. Thanks to the support of the university management of the TU Kaiserslautern, the students were able to participate in the workshop as well as in the previous conference free of charge - in line with the idea of the "University of the Greater Region". This deliberately chosen approach is intended to introduce students to the use of simulation tools and the associated research topics as early as possible.
The feedback on both the conference and the workshop was extremely positive. Thus, there will be a third edition of the TRNSYS Experience Seminar in 2017, probably on the Arlon campus of the University of Liège in Belgium. The offer to students within the framework of the University of the Greater Region is also to be continued. The series of events is organized by a multinational team consisting of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Philippe André (Université de Liège, Arlon), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Riad Benelmir (Université de Lorraine, Nancy), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sabine Hoffmann (TU Kaiserslautern), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Scholzen (University of Luxembourg) and Dr.-Ing. Julien Cartion (ICSEED, France). Special thanks go to the TU's university management and Dr. Thomas Schmidtgall (UniGR speaker) for supporting this year's event.