Ride the digital wave with CFD simulation

People have been riding waves for more than 5000 years, which makes surfing one of the world’s oldest sports. The surfboard industry is worth $3 billion, and surfing will debut as an Olympic sport in Tokyo this summer. But it’s more than just a sport.   In ancient Hawaiian culture, the art of he’e nalu (or “wave sliding”) is endowed with almost religious significance, where frustrated surfers would call upon the kahuna (priest) to aid them with a surfing prayer which asked the Gods to deliver great surf.  At the heart of the culture is the almost spiritual act of “surfboard shaping” in which a skilled craftsman manually shaves a piece of wood (or more recently polyurethane) into a hydrodynamic planing surface, carefully adjusting its shape for specific wave conditions and surfer preferences.   Using this process, guided by surfer feedback, surfboard design has evolved over hundreds of years. In this podcast, we ask the question, “could a digital twin help to design better, more responsive surfboards?” And discuss how you can test a digital surfboard using a digital wave.