Encoding and topological computation on textile structures

Abstract A textile structure is a periodic arrangement of threads in the thickened plane. A topological classification of textile structures is harder than for classical knots and links that are non-periodic and restricted to a bounded region. The first important problem is to encode all textile structures in a simple combinatorial way. This paper extends the notion of the Gauss code in classical knot theory, providing a tool for topological computation on these structures. As a first application, we present a linear time algorithm for determining whether a code represents a textile in the physical sense. This algorithm, along with invariants of textile structures, allowed us for the first time to classify all oriented textile structures woven from a single component up to complexity five.