Lotus Effect Simulator

Biomimicry looks at solved problems in nature and abstracts the underlying principle rather than copying the organism outright — the lotus leaf's self-cleaning surface is one of the clearest examples. This simulator builds a microtextured, wax-coated leaf from thousands of tiny bumps and rolls water droplets down its tilted surface in real time. Each droplet's shape and rolling behaviour comes directly from the Cassie–Baxter contact-angle model: raise the surface roughness or the base material's hydrophobicity and droplets bead up tighter, need less tilt to start moving, and sweep dirt off the leaf as they roll away — exactly the mechanism engineers borrow for self-cleaning paints, water-repellent textiles and anti-fouling coatings.