Running a certification study

An end-to-end walk through running an IEC 61400-1 design-load-case campaign on TurbineX — from picking a wind class through to the exported Certifier-grade PDF report. Expect a real campaign to tie up the slow lane for anything from 30 minutes to several hours depending on grid resolution, simulation length, seeds per DLC, and how many DLC templates you enable.

Shortcut:if you know what you want, ask Zeph instead — “Set up a certification study on the IEA-15-240-RWT-Onshore, IEC IIB, DLC 1.1 / 1.2 / 6.1, three seeds each, yaw set [-8, 0, +8]” fills the tabs in one Apply card. See Zeph, your AI assistant. The rest of this guide walks the same flow by hand.

Before you start

• You need a verifiedaccount — certification submissions are gated on email verification (the platform won't let an unverified user spend tokens at scale).
• A token budget that covers the run. The Run tab shows a token estimate before you submit; if it's above your monthly cap the submit button stays disabled.
• A turbine ready in your Library — either a demo, a clone you've edited, or a custom upload. See Turbines for the options.

1. Create a Certification study

From the dashboard click New Study, give it a descriptive name (study names are stable identifiers across re-runs — pick something like iea15-onshore-classII-fullcert), then pick Certification Run. Hit Start Certification Run and you land in the study workbench on the Turbine tab.

Certification studies differ from Single Simulation in three ways: they submit a multi-case batch instead of one job; they go to the simulations:slow queue (parallelised across the worker-slow fleet); and they unlock the Certification Report export.

2. Pick a turbine

Click any card in the Turbine Library to attach it. For a quick smoke campaign on a reference machine pick IEA-15-240-RWT-Onshore. If you're certifying a custom design, upload it first under Library → Upload and wait for the validator to green-tick the input set.

Heads up on offshore variants — picking a floating semi-sub (UMaineSemi) or monopile design pulls in the matching HydroDyn / SubDyn inputs automatically. You don't need to upload waves separately.

3. Set the environmental class

Move to the Inflowtab. For certification you don't define a single wind condition — instead you pick the IEC wind class and a turbulence category, and the platform feeds those into each DLC's wind-speed and turbulence rules.

• Class I — V_ref = 50 m/s (high wind sites).
• Class II — V_ref = 42.5 m/s (typical IEC reference).
• Class III — V_ref = 37.5 m/s (low wind).
• Class S — special class for site-specific conditions; you supply V_ref directly.

Turbulence category (A / B / C) controls the reference turbulence intensity for DLC 1.1 and 1.2. If you're unsure, IEC-B is the usual default for fatigue.

4. Enable the DLC templates

Open the Design Load Cases tab. DLCs are grouped by IEC category — the most common starting set:

• 1.1 / 1.2 — Power production, normal turbulence (fatigue + ultimate).
• 1.3 — Power production with extreme turbulence (ultimate).
• 1.4 / 1.5 — Extreme coherent gust with direction change / extreme wind shear.
• 2.x — Power production combined with a fault (grid loss, pitch runaway, etc).
• 6.1 – 6.4 — Parked / standing-still in 50-year and 1-year extremes.

Click the toggle on a DLC card to enable it. The cost panel on the right updates live: number of cases, estimated wall-clock per worker, and token total. Don't enable everything on your first pass — start with 1.1, 1.2, 6.1 and add the rest once you trust the campaign topology.

5. Tune per-DLC parameters

Click Edit on any enabled DLC card to override its defaults. The most-touched knobs:

• Wind speed range — by default the platform generates speeds from V_in to V_outin 2 m/s steps. Tighten to a narrower band if you're iterating, or widen step from 2 to 4 to halve the case count for a smoke run.
• Number of seeds — six is the IEC minimum for DLC 1.2 fatigue; you can drop to two or three for a quick check.
• Simulation time — 660 s is the platform default for DLC 1.x (600 s of useable data after the 60 s start-up transient). Shorter is faster but you lose fatigue accuracy.
• Yaw misalignment — DLC 1.1 and 1.2 sweep a yaw set (typically [-8°, 0°, +8°]); you can pin to [0°] for a fast pass.

The case count grows as n_wind × n_seeds × n_yaw per DLC. A naive full campaign across 1.x and 6.x can hit 600+ cases — keep an eye on the cost panel before submitting.

6. Submit and monitor

Switch to the Run tab. The page shows the configuration summary, a per-DLC breakdown table (cases, wall-clock estimate, token cost), and a token total. Click Run Certification Study. A confirmation dialog repeats the totals — confirm to submit.

Behind the scenes the platform:

• creates an environmental config from your IEC class;
• generates one DLC case per template, with the wind speeds / seeds / yaw you set;
• batch-submits to simulations:slow, which is auto-scaled on queue depth (Railway autoscale).

The Run tab swaps into a live status view: per-DLC progress bars, running/completed/failed counts, and the worker fleet's current concurrency. Refresh-safe — you can close the tab and the batch keeps going. Email notifications fire on completion if you've opted in under Profile.

7. Pull the results

Once the batch lands in COMPLETED, the workbench opens new tabs in the results pane:

• DLC Matrix — extreme load summary per DLC, with links into each underlying case.
• Fatigue DELs — damage-equivalent loads, rainflow-counted on the structural channels you flag in the environmental config.
• Load Rankings — top N cases by tower base, blade root, and yaw bearing extremes.
• Time Series — the same plotter as a single simulation, but per-case.

Open the Report tab in the workbench to configure a Certifier-grade PDF — section tree, revision, approvers, and an executive summary. Hit Generate and the report worker assembles the matrix, DEL tables, load-ranking pages, and per-DLC plots into a typeset PDF (typically a minute or two for a full campaign). If you re-run the study after generating a report, earlier revisions are flagged with a stale badge. See Reports for the full section catalog and the metadata flow.

Troubleshooting

Submit button is disabled

Three common causes: (a) no turbine attached, (b) the environmental config is missing an IEC class, (c) you haven't enabled any DLC templates. The Run tab surfaces which checklist item is unmet just above the button.

402 Payment Required at submit

The token estimate exceeds your monthly cap. Either drop a DLC, cut seeds, or upgrade plan. See Plans & limits.

One DLC stalls at FAILED while others succeed

Click into the failed DLC's card on the Run tab — each case is one OpenFAST job and the case-level error banner exposes the stderr. Common culprits on fault DLCs (2.x, 7.x) are servo parameter clashes when the turbine's controller doesn't support the fault scenario. Disable that DLC or pick a different fault type.

TurbSim case times out

Fine grids on long simulations can exceed the worker's TurbSim timeout (default 900 s, capped at 1 hour). Coarsen the grid from 35×35 down to 25×25, or shorten the simulation, then re-run the affected DLC.

Next steps

Once you've run one full campaign, head to Results & analysis for the channel and statistic reference, or wire the same workflow into a script using the API.