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| Fig. 1: Surfer riding a barreling wave. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
The Kelly Slater Wave Company Surf Ranch is an artificial wave pool located in Lemoore, California more 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The Surf Ranch is the product of Adam Fincham, a fluid mechanics specialist and Kelly Slater, a 11-time world champion surfer who joined forces to create an artificial wave that rivals a natural one. The pool itself is nearly 2300 feet long and nearly 500 feet wide, allowing surfers to ride a barrelling wave for over 500 yards. The Kelly Slater Surf Company Ranch is one of the first artificial wave pools to accurately mimic a natural wave, a feat that will change surfing and surfers around the world.
There are four surfing wave parameters that Kelly Slater, Adam Fincham, and other engineers had to take into account when building the Surf Ranch including wave height (Hb), wave peel angle (a), wave breaking intensity (Bi), and wave section length (SL). [1] Breaking wave height is crucial in developing an artificial wave because it controls the skill level of the rider to ride that wave. Wave peel angle determines whether or not a wave is surfable. Low peel angles cause a wave break too fast, resulting in a unsurfable wave whereas high peel angles create too difficult waves that only professional surfers can ride. [2] The third wave parameter is wave breaking intensity which is classified in four categories, spilling, plunging, collapsing, and surging; however surfers can only ride spilling or plunging wave which are barreling waves (see Fig. 1). The final wave parameter is wave section length. Ideally, a wave will break smoothly throughout the entirety of the wave but due to natural conditions such as wind a wave tends to break in sections. In order to control all four wave parameters the Kelly Slater Wave Company Surf Ranch designed a metal device called a hydrofoil that runs down the length of the pool. A hydrofoil is used to produce the actual surf-able wave in a pool. [3] Solar energy fuels the hydrofoil which creates a wave taller than 6 feet and specialized flooring controls wave break and section length.
The Kelly Slater Wave Company Surf Ranch acts as a model for future artificial wave pools. The perfection of the artificial wave at the Surf Ranch fuels the growth of surfing around the world, making it accessible to essentially everyone, not just people living near the beach.
© Zach Sehgal. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] B. E. Scarfe et al., "The Science of Surfing Waves and Surfing Breaks - A Review," UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 7 Mar 03.
[2] B. E. Scarfe, T. R. Healy, and H. G. Rennie, "Research-Based Surfing Literature for Coastal Management and the Science of Surfing - A Review," J. Coastal Res. 25, 539 (2009).
[3] J. H. Duncan, "An Experimental Investigation of Breaking Waves Produced by a Towed Hydrofoil," Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 377, 331 (1981).
