Surf Loch creates waves with Siemens Digital Enterprise portfolio

2021: Creating a Digital Double Wave

On June 17, 2021, Siemens announced that its solutions to the Digital Enterprise portfolio will help Surf Loch (USA, California) create surf pools with artificial waves that are as close to the ocean as possible. Combining the digital and real worlds within the framework of a comprehensive digital twin, Surf Loch specialists using software modeling were able to achieve the creation of waves according to individual requirements without building a real facility and conducting tests. The solution allows Surf Loch to generate waves based on the wishes of each particular surfer, and also guarantees their stability and reliability. The result was obtained through Xcelerator family software and Siemens automation technology. In addition to software solutions, Surf Loch also uses other offers of the Digital Enterprise portfolio from Siemens, including automation technologies.

The goal of Surf Loch is to make surf accessible to anyone and anywhere, while recreating ocean conditions and the corresponding untransferable sensations of activities. Given sport the growing popularity of this species worldwide, Surf Loch attracts surfers to artificial pools to reduce human influence on natural landscapes.

Surf Loch uses Xcelerator family solutions to form different types of waves, creating a surf feel in open water. A team of specialists builds a digital twin wave, then performs a computational hydrodynamics (IUD) analysis and multilevel optimization to identify all key settings of wave forming equipment in order to obtain the desired result. Surf Loch also uses Teamcenter's data and document management software. Cloud technology enables the company's specialists to work on drawings and design tasks with partners. In the future, the company plans to introduce such technologies around the world at new sites - in Las Vegas, Cabo San Lucas, Amsterdam and Sydney. Thanks to the solution of MindSphere of Siemens working by the principle "the industrial Internet of things as service" Surf Loch will be able to estimate efficiency of the assets and to plan service and also to trace and manage assets at the local level.

Even before the introduction of Xcelerator, Surf Loch had already used Siemens solutions, including Simotion (motion control), Sinamics (drive technologies) and the TIA Portal engineering platform to achieve the necessary level of wave accuracy in the pool. The complex of these tools allows you to form flexible, individually customizable waves so that beginners learn to stand on the board on stable repeating waves, and more advanced surfers choose more complex options according to their level.

When we create a wave, then each step in its formation is controlled with an accuracy of one thousandth of a second, "comments Tom Lohtefeld, founder and CEO of Surf Loch. - Cooperation with Siemens gave us the opportunity to combine the real and digital worlds in order to achieve such high accuracy. With this digital approach, we can create 400 waves per hour for customers. On the high seas, their number, as a rule, does not exceed five.