This project actually started because of a problem I ran into during a previous experiment. I had recently built a working microplastic filter using a homemade castor oil-based ferrofluid, and while it actually worked, it bothered me how much material was wasted in the process. I knew there had to be a cleaner, more sustainable way to separate these particles without constantly burning through physical resources, which is what led me deep into the research of marine biology. That is when I discovered how manta rays use vortical separation inside their gill rakers to filter food out of the ocean without ever clogging. My ultimate goal is to take this digital research and use it to manufacture a real, physical filter one day, but the first step was proving the math could work in a digital environment.
To kick off development, I officially built and launched the core simulation engine inside a script called flow_model.py. The primary challenge here was establishing proper physical scaling, taking a real-world oceanic flow velocity of 31.3 kilometers per hour and accurately converting it down into localized millimeter-per-second computational forces inside the channel. I integrated a sine-wave mathematical function to simulate the unique, bio-inspired vortical fluid behavior that happens when water hits the geometry of the ray’s rakers. The initial tracking code is running incredibly well, calculating smooth coordinate paths for the particles and resolving a full 100mm transit loop in just 0.40 seconds.