Digital Twins Replicate Ocean Waves on Demand, 2024 Paris Olympics

While the 2024 Olympic Games will be centered in Paris, the surfing competition will ride waves nearly 10,000 miles away in Teahupo’o,Tahiti. As the sport gains Olympic prominence, a California company is making waves by using technology to bring surfing inland.

Surfing, which debuted as an Olympic sport in 2020, depends on specific weather and wind conditions.

Surf Loch uses a combination of technologies to create ideal surfing conditions miles away from the ocean, controlling the timing of the water and the power of the waves.

Siemens assisted Surf Loch in enhancing its wave creation abilities. By creating a digital twin of their wave pools, Siemens helped Surf Loch design and construct a surfing environment.

“Making the perfect wave requires an astounding amount of calculation,” said Tom Lochtefeld, Surf Loch’s CEO. “Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio gives us this capability, “We leverage the world’s most comprehensive digital twin within an ecosystem of technology suppliers and equipment providers. This ecosystem allows us to create repeatable waves that all surfer[s] will enjoy.”

Using Siemens' Xcelerator suite, Surf Loch created a digital twin of its artificial surfing pool to simulate waves and optimize their technology to increase frequency and power.

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With their digital twin, Surf Loch can monitor and change the performance of their wave systems to meet user demands, such as making smaller waves for inexperienced surfers.

Siemens Simcenter tool was utilized for airflow and strength analysis of the pneumatic fans to control the creation of waves. The tool lets the company’s artificial environment generate more than 400 waves an hour - compared to just 10 in the ocean.

The digital twin also enabled the company to create wave variations to match what surfers might expect from a typical ocean surfing experience.

Using the Insights Hub software combined with data monitoring, Surf Loch controls the status of all wavemaking systems and performs predictive maintenance, ensuring its surfing facility operates efficiently.

“We can predict when they will start to trend in a bad way, knowing that before they fail is very important because we can schedule a maintenance service without having the client or the customer lose waves,” said Michael Brown, an engineering technician at Surf Loch. “To know the status and health of the system is very important because pool operation can’t stop, everyone wants to surf.”