Numerical Investigation of the Hydrodynamics of Changing Fin Positions within a 4-Fin Surfboard Configuration

Most sports like surfing are highly developed. It is necessary to tease the last percentages out of the competitors and equipment—in the case of surfing the surfboard-fin-system—to win competitions or championships. In this computational investigation, a parameter study of the positioning of the two...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied sciences Vol. 10; no. 3; p. 816
Main Authors Falk, Sebastian, Kniesburges, Stefan, Janka, Rolf, O’Keefe, Tom, Grosso, Roberto, Döllinger, Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2020
Subjects
Angle of attack
Computational fluid dynamics
computational fluid dynamics (cfd)
Computer applications
Configurations
Fins
Flow simulation
Flow velocity
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Fluid mechanics
Hydrodynamics
Investigations
quad
Simulation
Software
star-ccm
surfboard
Surfing
Tournaments & championships
Turbulence models
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Summary:Most sports like surfing are highly developed. It is necessary to tease the last percentages out of the competitors and equipment—in the case of surfing the surfboard-fin-system—to win competitions or championships. In this computational investigation, a parameter study of the positioning of the two rear fins within a 4-fin configuration with fixed front fins on a surfboard is executed to find appropriate fin positions for specific surf situations. Four different inflow velocities are investigated. The RANS and URANS models combined with the SST k − ω turbulence model, which is available within the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package STAR-CCM+, are used to simulate the flow field around the fins for angles of attack (AoA) between 0° and 45°. The simulation results show that shifting the rear fins toward the longitudinal axis of the surfboard lowers the maximum lift. Surfboards with 4-fin configurations are slower in nearly the whole range of AoA due to a higher drag force but produce a higher lift force compared to the 3-fin configuration. The lift and drag forces increase significantly with increasing inflow velocity. This study shows a significant influence of the rear fin positioning and the inflow velocity on lift and drag performance characteristics.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app10030816