Well done! I have always wondered if this technology was being used on board and foil design. Even though you may not make fins, it would be interest to have Luca analyze and explain the effect of different fin designs at different speeds (i.e. thruster versus quad on small waves versus large, fin shapes, fin sizes, etc.).

Where are the other videos you mentioned above - I could not see them on your site?

FCS has used this (+ tests in water tunnels) already to design the nexus fins (the v1, the silver ones). It was interesting, because the best theoritical fin design was not the best one for surfing. For instance, pro riders preferred the acute edge on the traditional leading edge of flat-sided side fins rather than the more hydrodynamic rounded edge of the nexus. They then made the v2 (black) by combining CFD with empiric / heuristics design recipes, notably for toe-in & cant.

Same with the Quobba fins, CFD designed, but they say that one design happen to just work in real life, but they didn't really anticipated it.

For boards, I guess the issue is to understand first how the board travels in the water (not in a straight line, you will need real life testing in the water for this), and then to understand what are the desired effect: what are you trying to enhance? It may be quite different than just simply reducing drag.

Firewire has already made this effort.
firewiresurfboards.com/the-wire/sci-fi-enters-cfd-scientific-dissection-surfboard-performance
But they are only trying to analyse the existing. The real test would be to be able to predict a board performance from its CAD shape...

colas said..
FCS has used this (+ tests in water tunnels) already to design the nexus fins (the v1, the silver ones). It was interesting, because the best theoritical fin design was not the best one for surfing. For instance, pro riders preferred the acute edge on the traditional leading edge of flat-sided side fins rather than the more hydrodynamic rounded edge of the nexus. They then made the v2 (black) by combining CFD with empiric / heuristics design recipes, notably for toe-in & cant.

Same with the Quobba fins, CFD designed, but they say that one design happen to just work in real life, but they didn't really anticipated it.

For boards, I guess the issue is to understand first how the board travels in the water (not in a straight line, you will need real life testing in the water for this), and then to understand what are the desired effect: what are you trying to enhance? It may be quite different than just simply reducing drag.

Firewire has already made this effort.
firewiresurfboards.com/the-wire/sci-fi-enters-cfd-scientific-dissection-surfboard-performance
But they are only trying to analyse the existing. The real test would be to be able to predict a board performance from its CAD shape...

Totally agree Colas, A combination of real world testing and CFD can help us to further progress design (or simply quantify what we already know with scientific data... which is still really cool).

I am aware of 3D fins and Firewire's work in relation to CFD and it is actually what got us started with CFD. Firewire surprisingly are using Openfoam to conduct their CFD analysis which unfortunately is rather limited in its capacity (it is a free opensource program which has a few limitations and test restrictions). The tests in the link you provided are based on a board that is actually static (stationary) and the water is the moving around the object which unfortunately does not translate well in the real world.

Currently we are using STAR-CCM++ which has better processing power and offers a wider range of test formats which in turn allows us to digitally create turning arcs, stalls and even waves in real world scenarios (you can see some of our tests in the link I provided cantSUPenough are static whilst others are free flowing).

I will be sure to checkout FCS Nexus fins as I hadn't heard about their CFD analysis till now. Thanks.

Cheers
Andrew
The Surfboard Warehouse