Simulation evaluation of knitted mesh structure using morphological operations

Abstract

High-quality simulation of fabric structural features is significant for realizing the morphological prediction of nonuniform mesh structures and building numerical simulation of physical properties. For lace textiles which have hundreds and thousands of variable meshes, an objective and unified standard to evaluate structural deformation is quite challenging. It needs to comprehensively and quantitatively conclude a result, instead of visual and subjective judgment. Therefore, this paper proposed an image-based method to mathematically solve accuracy by comparing morphological features from both simulation result and real fabric photograph. Jacquardtronic lace textiles were fabricated as experimental samples. Based on morphological expansion and corrosion algorithms, non-characteristic lapping details were eroded from binary images with only featured single-pixel contours of irregular meshes. Shape descriptor of each featured image was represented by a moment vector of seven Hu invariant moments. Then the morphological vectors of both simulated and real fabric images were substituted into a defined equation of similarity measurement. This image-based evaluation model effectively avoids defects of subjective visual observation and geometric measurement methods.