The Technology Behind Kelly Slater’s Wave Pool
This month 11-time world champion Kelly Slater revealed his latest innovation to the sport of surfing: a world-class wave in Abu Dhabi. Slater and a cadre of the world's best surfers revealed the new Surf Abu Dhabi project, and just like Slater's first wave pool in Lemoore, California, this one blew minds.
“I’ve surfed hundreds of incredible waves across the world and this wave in Abu Dhabi stacks up well against some of the best waves on earth," Slater explained in a press statement. "I’ve drawn on that traveling surf education to design the wave at Surf Abu Dhabi.”
How a perfect wave in Abu Dhabi came to exist at all is a marvel of technology, human ingenuity and imagination. In the early Aughts, for the better part of ten years Slater and the team of engineers at Kelly Slater Wave Company toiled away, designing their masterpiece. Built in an old, man-made waterski pond in the otherwise quiet town of Lemoore in California’s Central Valley, they worked in complete secrecy before finally revealing the wave to the world at the end of 2015.
Collectively, the surf world has been mesmerized by the wave and the few performances its witnessed thus far. From Slater’s first ride, to Gerry Lopez going left, to the WSL’s Future Classic, to Shane Dorian’s son, Jackson, giving the place a going over, there’s no question the Kelly Slater Wave Company has created the best artificial wave in the world thus far, but still, little is understood about how it actually works.
The science behind the wave is largely the work of Adam Fincham, a researcher at the University of Southern California. Slater first approached Fincham with the idea back in 2006, around the same time he founded the Kelly Slater Wave Company. Fincham had limited surfing experiencing, instead focusing his scholarly energies on topics such as “digital particle imaging velocimetry for laser diagnostics” and “decaying grid turbulence in a rotating stratified fluid”—hardly the kind of surf banter one hears in the Malibu lineup.
Slater and Fincham had to basically invent their own science to create the wave. Up against the laws of physics, they had to deal with forces such as turbulence and something called seiching. The only two scientific papers sited in their patent date back to the 1870s. In essence, they were making it up as they went along.
The experimentation process began in the controlled environment of a miniature wave tank in a top-secret lab. From there, Fincham concluded that a hydrofoil device would be the best mechanism for creating the wave energy. The thought was that the blade of the hydrofoil, engineered to create a solitary wave (what physicists call a soliton), would then be submerged underwater and pulled along the bottom, thus creating a perfect, peeling wave.
Once the team was satisfied with how the wave energy would be created, Slater stepped in to talk bathymetry and work out the nuances of the bottom contour. Applying his lifetime of experience at surf spots like Kirra, Jeffreys Bay and Rincon, Fincham was able to fine-tune the model in the lab.
After endless experimentation and computer modeling the team was ready to take their show on the road. The artificial waterski pool that the team acquired in Lemoore proved to be a godsend. Measuring 700 meters long and 150 meters wide, it provided them with the room (and privacy) they needed to develop the wave. A full-size hydrofoil was built and installed under water. The hydrofoil was then attached to a device that would pull it down the pull at an upwards of 20 mph. The size of several train cars, it’s rigged up with cables and pulleys and sits on a track on over 150 truck tires. It’s then pulled the full length of the pool. Once the hydrofoil is in motion it begins to create the wave.
The bottom of the pool features different slopes and contours to create different sections of the wave. The bottom of the pool has a spongy feel akin to a yoga mat.
One of the big hurdles to overcome was what to do with all the turbulent whitewater. Large gutters were installed to catch the water and minimize backwash. The hydrofoil is pulled from one end of the pool to the other creating a right-hander, then when the hydrofoil is pulled back to the other end of the pool it creates a left-breaking wave. It’s takes approximately three minutes for the water in the pool to calm down enough for it to be ridable again.
There's more to it than that, obviously, but you get the idea. The Kelly Slater wave pool is a modern marvel, whether you're a surfer, engineer or just an intrigued spectator.
With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.