Surf Board 54

This was a fascinating research project involving

* riding waves with an instrumented surfboard (a pitot tube and pressure gauge for speed measurement) - measured speeds ranged from 5 to 10 m/s
* observing surfboard riding and taking speed measurements from the shore (similar results)
* reviewing ocean wave theory - deep ocean waves, solitary (cnoidal) waves and breaking waves
* developing an early (punch card!) computer model of a shoaling breaking wave
* reviewing and adapting theory for planing water craft - including stability problems (porpoising) and lift/drag/trim data from seaplane research.
* designing, constructing and operating an experiment which generated a standing wave in a flume tank. The resulting wave was about 200mm high (flume 1.2m wide, flow rate 0.37 cumecs)
* constructing model surfboards and experimenting with them on the standing wave.
* (unsuccessfully) trying to model a human spring mass system to dampen the instability of the models (this was essentially a 2D flow - it turns out that a 3D flow would probably have eliminated the instability - see the paper by Hornung and Killen).
* recommending some design changes for surfboards: sharp trailing edges and a stepped front to eliminate the strong tendency of the convex front of a surfboard to nosedive (I later built such a surfboard - although it performed as expected on a wave its non-planing drag was high and this made it much more difficult to paddle than a conventional surfboard and this made it impractical)