I have scanned most of the
(typewritten!) pages of my thesis and created a 400K
PDF
file. To save space I have not included several of
the photos so save them as images from this page if you
need them. No copyright but acknowledge and/or a link
would be appreciated.
Here is the table of contents:
1.Use of sluice gate to generate a standing breaking wave
3. Nosediving at the bottom of a wave (more of a problem
with surf skis and surfboats)
4. Planing craft trim data from NACA seaplane experiments
in the 1930s
5. Pitot tube and pressure gauge
mounted on a surfboard for estimating speed
6. Panoramic view of one of the
field experiments
(Scotts Head, New South Wales North Coast)
In a shoaling wave the water particle
orbits become ellipses
One year later Peter Killen (URL updated 7 Nov 06) undertook a similar, but more sophisticated thesis at the Australian National University. Peter used a plough shaped barrier to produce a 3D peeling breaking wave. The work was published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics in 1976 (see below). Peter kindly cited my thesis work in that paper.
Peter subsequently built a full size standing wave system which he could ride with a surfboard at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Queensland (circa 1979).
Model surfboards can ride this wave unsupported, provided the correctly scaled weight loads them at the right centre-of-mass position. This makes it possible to determine the forces on the board without a balance. A comparison of the measured forces with estimates, particularly of the drag, indicate that viscous and surface-tension phenomena introduce only small scale effects in the Froude number modelling. While the results are not sufficiently accurate to draw definite conclusions about the effects of surfboard shape, they indicate clearly that surfboard flows may be modelled with quantitative success in the laboratory.
Desirable wave shape!
Picture of the laboratory wave with a model surfboard