A three dimensional micro-mechanical model is developed by using a three dimensional geometric model and the variational principles for woven fabric composites. The unified modeling strategy starts with developing the three dimensional description of the general woven fabric geometry based on textile processing science, and then a variational potential energy method and a variational complementary energy method are presented respectively to obtain the three dimensional stiffness and compliance matrices associated with the geometric model. This method takes into account the continuity of the yarn without having to discretize it as previous methods. This study results in new closed form of continuous integration formulae to predict 3D elastic properties for woven fabric composites, which can provide a link between micro-structural design and macro-structural analysis. The model is validated by experiments available in the literature [35,36].
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