One of our latest consultancy projects at the UoA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering involved modelling an artificial surfing reef for Bluecoast Consulting Engineers, to be built at the city of Albany ( https://www.bluecoastconsulting.com.au/news/2020/8/26/albany-artificial-surfing-reef-project-video )

The scope of the work involved using olaFlow (https://olaflow.github.io) to model how the reef works under different tide levels and wave conditions. The model calibration was informed by physical modelling data provided by the client and involved an extensive set of 2D simulations. In the final phase, detailed 3D simulations were developed to test the performance of the whole structure, leading to beautiful breaking waves.

In the video below we show one of those final cases, blending a photo-realistic rendering of the waves breaking over the artificial #surf reef with a scientific rendering showing the air bubbles and turbulent coherent structures under the breaking waves.