Minimizing Textile Waste through Virtual Prototyping: A Digital Color and Texture Simulation Framework for Chenille Fabrics

The textile industry is under increasing pressure to reduce pre-consumer waste. This is particularly true for complex fancy yarns, where traditional trial-and-error sampling consumes significant water, energy, and raw materials. This study presents a digital manufacturing framework for chenille fabrics that integrates six-axis precise servo control, algorithmic space-dyeing, and a Digital Twin simulation model based on the Ostwald color system. Conventional CAD tools often struggle with volumetric pile structures. In contrast, our proposed framework predicts the spatial color mixing and morphological blooming of chenille yarns. This supports virtual prototyping of chenille tufted fabrics. Experimental validation was carried out at both yarn and fabric levels. Validation experiments were conducted. In the segmentation experiment, yarn segment-length deviation remained below 3.5%. Separate yarn-performance testing also showed an average breaking strength of 5091.4 cN, indicating stable mechanical performance of the produced chenille yarns. Fabric-level verification further demonstrated visual consistency between simulated textures and corresponding manufactured chenille tufted fabric samples. The proposed workflow replaces repeated physical iterations with virtual evaluation and a reduced number of confirmation samples. This is estimated to reduce sampling waste by approximately 70%. In addition, the ability to engineer complex textures through yarn mechanics rather than chemical finishing reduces dependence on pollutant-intensive shrinking agents. The proposed framework offers a scalable design-to-fabric approach that helps bridge digital design and resource-efficient chenille manufacturing.